


Students from the New World

by Althaeabuddy



Category: Dangan Ronpa - All Media Types, New Dangan Ronpa V3: Everyone's New Semester of Killing
Genre: A weird mix of the Japanese/English versions, Alternate Universe - Hope's Peak Academy (Dangan Ronpa), Anxiety, Canon-Typical Violence, Drama, Fluff, Gen, Not a no despair AU, V3 spoilers, angst maybe, tags for individual chapters
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-01-13
Updated: 2018-05-15
Packaged: 2019-03-04 10:37:52
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 14
Words: 35,273
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13362876
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Althaeabuddy/pseuds/Althaeabuddy
Summary: Fifteen years after the Biggest, Most Awful, Most Tragic Event In Human History, much of the world has been rebuilt and Hope's Peak is reopened by Makoto Naegi and the Future Foundation.16 ultimate students begin their school lives within this new world. A year of budding friendships, adventures, hope, and despair awaits.





	1. Invitation

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Well, this is my first fanfic I've posted on here, so I hope I'm doing everything right!  
> I really wanted to write something about the DRV3 cast at Hope's Peak, and I've got a lot of ideas planned for this fic, though I know it's pretty slow right now. I'm hoping to have it be 1 part shenanigans and character interactions, 1 part drama, and 1 part a more complex (sub?)plot. Either way, I've got a lot more plans for this story.

     Shuichi checked the envelope and address three times, just to make sure. It was definitely his name, clearly printed in dark ink on the invitation.

     Rationally, he knew it couldn’t mean anybody else. After all, the letter specifically mentioned that he would be attending Hope’s Peak as the Ultimate Detective, which would be far too much of a coincidence if it were supposed to be for anybody else. But still, why him? Surely there must so many other talented people to choose over him. He wasn’t like Kirigiri, who had been a full-fledged detective by the time she was Shuichi’s age, he was just…well, just a nobody who’d solved a single case. And there was no way he could do that again.

     Shuichi sighed, slipping the letter back into the envelope and doing his best to bury it under the pile of junk mail it had come with. It really wouldn’t do much to hide it, his uncle was a detective after all, and he was sure to notice an opened letter amongst the pile. But it really didn’t feel right to throw it away.

     As if on cue, his phone buzzed. A text from his uncle. _Working late tonight. Will be back at 8. Eat without me._ That was fine, his uncle usually worked late during the week anyways, all too often the circumstances of a case would change and so would his uncle’s work. He wondered what it was this time. His uncle had been complaining earlier about a couple who wouldn’t stop fighting over divorce terms, maybe it was about them.

     Really, it wasn’t any of Shuichi’s business. He did barely anything to help his uncle now, even though his uncle had done so much for him. The least he could do would be to help with some of the cases, if he wasn’t such a…failure as a detective.

     Shaking any self-loathing thoughts out of his head, Shuichi went ahead and heated up a pack of cup noodles, even though he knew his uncle wouldn’t be pleased that he kept eating them. He simply wasn’t a good enough cook to make anything else.

     It was some time later, after Shuichi had finished his thrown-together meal and begun his homework that his uncle returned home, looking exhausted as he removed his shoes and coat, tossing the apartment keys onto the kitchen table. To Shuichi’s relief, he didn’t bother looking through the stack of mail.

     “Cup noodles again?” The look he gave Shuichi wasn’t a harsh or scolding one, but Shuichi couldn’t help but feel bad regardless.

     “I’m sorry.”

     His uncle shook his head. “No, no, it’s fine. I was home too late.” He smiled at his nephew and gave him a pat on the shoulder. “I’ll take care of breakfast tomorrow, if you’d like.”

     Shuichi smiled and nodded, but really, he only felt worse. He couldn’t help his uncle with his work or with taking care of the house. His uncle had taken him in out of the goodness of his heart. There was any number of kids his age out there who had lost their parents, and so many of them had nobody to take them in.

     Then again, there were probably a lot more parents out there who had lost their children. Babies did not fare well during a tragedy. But that wasn’t really something he liked thinking about, the idea that well over half his generation had died well before they’d even been old enough to start school. But, he supposed, that was reality.

     A few hours later, lying awake in his bed watching the flickering shadows on his ceiling, he thought about just how helpful it would be for his uncle if he attended a school like Hope’s Peak.

 

     The next morning, sitting across from his uncle over breakfast, the topic finally came up. His uncle took a sip of his coffee, folding up the paper he’d been reading. From the front cover, Shuichi could make out the word _Remnants_ in a headline. So there’d been an incident again, and if it was front-page news then people had probably been hurt. Shuichi frowned down at his meal.

     His uncle took another sip of coffee. “So, Hope’s Peak, huh?”

     “Oh.” Shuichi raised his head slowly, unconsciously reaching for his hat. It was still in his room, he was at least okay with looking his uncle in the eyes, or at least mostly okay. “I…do you think I should go?”

     His uncle was silent for a moment, in thought. “I think it would be good for you.”

     “I see.” Shuichi could feel his uncle’s eyes upon him. There wasn’t much use in hiding his thoughts from him, so he blurted out “Do you really think I’m good enough? To be an ultimate, I mean?”

     “Yes,” his uncle said, and that was the end of that conversation.

 

     Despite being in Tokyo, there were only fifty students in Shuichi’s year at his high school. They were the students who had been broken apart, all because of Despair and all because of Hope’s Peak academy. At least the school didn’t have a bad image as a result, being run by the Ultimate Hope himself probably helped. But Hope’s Peak was a big name place for big name people, and not a detective who really only made things worse for everyone around him. Though his uncle had told him not to think like that.

     Maybe if he went to Hope’s Peak, he would get better. Maybe, he would become a real detective, somebody who both he and his uncle could be proud of. Maybe he could learn to look people besides his uncle in the eyes, and maybe he wouldn’t doubt himself so much.

     Shuichi read the letter once again, eyes lingering on the signature line. Written by the headmaster himself. Had he sent a personalized email to every potential student?

     Shuichi removed the return envelope, already addressed to Hope’s Peak, and went about writing his reply.

 

     And so it was that three months later, Shuichi sat in the back of the car his uncle had borrowed from a neighbor, clutching his suitcase to his chest as they inched along through Tokyo lunchtime traffic. Though really, Hope’s Peak wasn’t that far away, at least not by car, taking the subway would have made it an extra hour. Shuichi carried one of his detective novels outside of the suitcase, in case the drive took any longer, but with his nerves and some of the bumps in the roads, he felt it wasn’t a good idea. Maybe once they got back out onto a major street, one of the ones that had been fully repaved in the Tokyo Restoration and not one that had been patched back together with tar.

     The ride to Hope’s Peak somehow managed to be both too short and too long for Shuichi, and as he stepped out of the car onto the pristine campus, he was hit with the magnitude of it all. The newly built school building towered over his head, lined with glass panels like a skyscraper. Shuichi craned his neck to gaze up at it, pulling down his hat to shield his eyes from the sun. Of all people, he, Shuichi Saihara, was now a student of a school like Hope’s Peak Academy.

     The first day of his arrival involved simple stuff. Hope’s Peak students all had dorm rooms, and so Shuichi carried his suitcase up to the second floor of the first-years dorm. Though technically, he thought, it should be second years, he’d already had a year of high school after all, but that was beside the point. His suitcase was light enough that it posed little problem, he didn’t have a lot of personal possessions that he wanted to bring with him, just clothes, novels, and the electronic devices he would most likely need for classwork. More things took up more space, and they would make more work for the people around him, and that was something Shuichi would rather avoid.

     There were a number of other students unpacking, and Shuichi glanced through a couple of open doorways, wondering if any of the other students would be in his class. A boy with spiky purple hair caught sight of him and gave him a wave, and Shuichi waved back nervously, a bit embarrassed at his snooping.

     The rest of the day passed in a blur as Shuichi threw the rest of his stuff into his room and said his goodbyes to his uncle, who patted his shoulder and reassured him that he would be fine. The opening ceremony was all right, if a bit dull, though a lot of students were excited at seeing Headmaster Naegi in person, and Shuichi was no exception. The headmaster was a good speaker, even if he looked closer to Shuichi’s age than in his 30s, but his voice was reassuring and his speech on how everyone should feel welcome at Hope’s Peak and his plans for inclusion of those with and without talents was nice. Shuichi accidently knocked his arm against the girl sitting next to him, and she shot him a glare that made him shrink away.

     The day was long enough that Shuichi fell asleep surprisingly fast, and almost immediately he was jolted from his sleep by his alarm. Class. It was time for class, his first class at Hope’s Peak academy.

     He put on the Hope’s Peak uniform, a dark brown blazer and pants with a white button down and a red tie. He smoothed down the shirt, and buttoned up the blazer all the way in the hopes that he would look at least respectable enough to be walking the halls of Hope’s Peak. Placing his hat onto his head, he hoped that the dress code here was more lax than at his previous high school.

     The school building was big enough that it took some time to find his homeroom, even with a map, but he eventually found it, marked as class 91-B, which he decided was an odd way to mark the room, by class year. He hesitated, reaching for the door. He’d taken long enough to find it that some of his classmates were probably already there, and he would surely need to introduce himself to the—

     “Oh, is this your classroom too?”

     Shuichi jumped in surprise, turning to look at the speaker. A girl with long blond hair smiled at him. Her smile was warm and friendly enough that Shuichi felt a little reassured. She had musical note clips in her hair and a similar pattern on her skirt, so Shuichi assumed she must be a musician of sorts. He hoped it wasn’t weird to analyze people like that. Well, if she could wear her own outfit, with only the Hope’s Peak blazer to identify her as a student, he was probably okay with his hat.

     “My name’s Kaede Akamatsu. It’s nice to meet you.”

     It took Shuichi a moment to notice she was speaking to him. “Oh, um, hi. I’m Shuichi Saihara.”

     Kaede nodded in confirmation. “Well, Saihara-kun, should we go meet our classmates?”

     Oh. Shuichi had almost forgotten that that’s what they were supposed to be doing. “Ok.”

     So Kaede slid open the classroom door as Shuichi tailed along behind her, looking over her shoulder to see the people who would be his classmates.

     As it so happened, there weren’t that many people there yet, but as the clock ticked down to the start of class, more and more students filed in. Kaede had suggested that everyone wait to introduce themselves until everyone was present (there would be sixteen of them, there were always sixteen students per class), so Shuichi lingered in the corner of the classroom near Kaede waiting for everyone to arrive.

     When the last person, a short, tired looking red-headed girl enter, Shuichi could tell that Kaede was more than ready to start getting to know everyone.

     “Hi everyone!” Kaede said, waving to catch her classmates’ attention. “It’s nice to meet everyone,” she looked around at each of the students, some of whom looked excited and other who seemed more wary. “Maybe, we can all introduce ourselves!”

     Before she could say anything else, the purple-haired boy Shuichi remembered from yesterday cut in. “Okay then!” He flashed his classmates a smile. Apparently he had decided to forgo the school uniform altogether in favor of wearing his own jacket, which was decorated on the underside with a space-themed print. “My name’s Kaito Momota! And I’m the ultimate astronaut! No, not just the ultimate astronaut, I’m the Luminary of the Stars!” He looked quite proud of himself.

     To Shuichi’s left, a girl with wild blond hair snorted, and Kaito looked a bit discouraged, but it didn’t last long. “Okay, next! How about you!” He pointed at another student.

     “Me?” The student, a girl with dark brown twintails said skeptically, clearly not particularly pleased about being nominated. “How about someone else.” She frowned, playing the ribbon on her uniform, which she’d worn properly, but with long red leggings that rose to just below her skirt.

     “No, no, we all have to introduce ourselves!” Kaito protested, and the girl’s frown got darker.

     “Fine, whatever. I’m Maki Harukawa. Ultimate Child Caregiver.” And with that, Maki, made it quite clear that she didn’t plan to say anything more. Apparently, Kaito wasn’t discouraged by this though.

     “Okay, next, how about—“

     “H-hey!”

     Everyone turned towards the source of the noise, Shuichi included, and took in the odd scene. A short boy with a cheeky grin whose uniform seemed to extend to wearing only the Hope’s Peak blazer over a white outfit with a checkered scarf was tugging on the hair of another…boy? He didn’t really look human, more like some sort of android perhaps.

     “Huh, is this real hair?” The short boy asked in excitement. “Is it attached to you? If I cut it off, would it grow back”

     “Please stop!” the android responded in annoyance, pushing at the boy to little effect. “This is discrimination! You wouldn’t do this to the others, so you shouldn’t do it to me! I’m a person too you know!”

     “But you’re not! You’re a robot, right?”

     “That is extremely robophobic! I have lawyers you kno—“

     “Um, okay.” Kaede interrupted the two, a somewhat strained smile on her face. “Let’s not fight, how about you two introduce yourselves?”

     “Yes!” the apparent robot agreed. “My name is K1B0, but please call me Keebo. And while I may indeed be a robot, I’m a student just like you. So” Keebo raised his voice “I will not accept any kind of robophobia from any of you! I know my rights!”

     “Ok.” Kaede smiled politely. “What’s your talent?”

     Keebo faltered for a moment. “W-well, since I am the ultimate robot, I am the most advanced example of artificial intelligence that science has to off—“

     “So your talent is just existing?” The boy who had been tormenting Keebo asked, placing a finger on his chin in a mockery of thought. “Wow, I didn’t even know that could be a talent! I thought you had to actually be good at something.”

     Before Keebo could response, Kaede once again attempted to salvage the situation, this time looking a bit more annoyed. “Geez, you two…anyway, why don’t you introduce yourself too?” she said to the other boy.

     Keebo mumbled something about how this situation was not his fault, but the boy didn’t seem to mind. “Oh, ok! My name’s Kokichi Ouma, and I’m the” he stretched his arms out as if for effect “the ultimate supreme leader!”

     Kaede frowned. “No, you’re not. What’s your real talent?”

     “Awww, you don’t believe me? That’s so mean.” Kokichi pouted. “But I really am the ultimate supreme leader! I have a super secret organization with over 10,000 members.”

     “Really? What’s it called?”

     “It’s a secret so I can’t tell you!” Kokichi said smugly. “Or maybe you were right and it doesn’t exist at all. Maybe I just lied!”

     “Geez, can you—“

     “Anyway.” Kokichi jabbed his finger at Kaede, looking a bit more serious, though Shuichi really couldn’t tell if he was faking it or not. “You’ve been telling all of us to introduce ourselves, but you haven’t introduced yourself yet. “

     “I’d be glad to!” Kaede said firmly. “My name’s Kaede Akamatsu, and I’m the ultimate pianist.”

     Ah, so Shuichi had been right, her talent did involve music. The blond girl from before snorted again, muttering “ultimate penis” just loud enough for everyone to hear.

     “Ok!” Kaede spoke louder. “Shuichi, why don’t you introduce yourself?”

     Wait, what?

     Shuichi wasn’t ready for this, and he certainly wasn’t ready to be made fun of by any of his new classmates. He fiddled with his hat, lowering his gaze on the off chance that he might meet someone’s eye.

     “My name’s Shuichi Saihara.” Shuichi tried to speak as loud as he could. “And I’m the…ultimate detective.” He waited for someone to say something, either for that girl to make fun of him or for someone else to mention Kirigiri, but instead he only heard Kaede move on to the next person to introduce themself, to Shuichi’ relief.

     He listened through the rest of the introductions, which went off a lot more smoothly, taking in the details of each of his classmates. Another dark haired girl introduced herself as Tenko Chabashira, ultimate aikido master, a girl named Angie was apparently the ultimate artist, though she also said that it was actually Atua who was the artist or something, Shuichi didn’t know. A giant of a man introduced himself as Gonta Gokuhara, and asked Shuichi if he liked bugs, which Shuichi, slightly afraid for his life, said yes to.

     The rude girl who had made fun of Kaito and Kaede was apparently an inventor named Miu, and she made a few more vulgar remarks regarding her breasts and her apparent genius intellect. The short red-headed girl was named Himiko and she insisted repeatedly that while she may have been admitted as ultimate magician, she was actually an ultimate mage.

     “What are you, some kind of chunni?” Miu asked, and Himiko fell silent, apparently pouting.

     The tiniest boy Shuichi had ever seen introduced himself as Ryoma Hoshi, stated he had been the ultimate tennis pro, and promptly ignored everyone else.

     Kirumi was the ultimate maid, and she declared that she looked forward to working with everyone, and that she would take care of any work cleaning the classroom, which made Himiko perk up a bit.

     An unusual boy with long dark hair and bandages stated that he was Korekiyo Shinguji, ultimate anthropologist, and he was extremely interested in “observing the beauty of the class” or something.

     “Creepy male.” Tenko complained.

     There was a laid-back boy with greenish hair whose name was Rantaro, the ultimate adventurer. He seemed nice enough, Shuichi decided, but it was hard to picture anyone willing to explore a world where there was so much danger present.

     “Is that everyone?” Kaede asked, glancing around the classroom, before her eyes caught the final student. “Oh, who are you? I’m sorry I didn’t notice you.”

     “Oh, it’s fine.” The student, a blue-haired girl, said. “I’m pretty plain, so I’m not surprised you didn’t notice me. But I’m the ultimate cosplayer.” She glanced around at the class, seemingly excited from mentioning her talent. “If anyone wants to go to a cosplay, I’d be glad to help!”

     So, Shuichi thought, looking over at all of his new classmates, careful to avoid meeting any of their eyes. These would be the people who he would spend the next two years with.

     Well, he wasn’t sure about some of them, but most seemed like nice enough people. Maybe people who could be his friends, if he worked to know them.

     He caught Kaede’s contented smile from under the brim of his hat, and smiled back with a bit of hesitation. Maybe attending Hope’s Peak had been a good idea after all.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yikes, this got longer than I wanted it to be. And I feel like it kind of dragged a little. I've only ever written short stories before so I'm used to going into extreme detail on most events, but here I think I did too much of that so I had to wrap things up kind of quickly. I'll work on that for the next chapter, which I hope to have out in a week or so. Next Saturday, hopefully.
> 
> Hey, does anyone know how to indent on here. I don't want to have to go and manually add a bunch of spaces after each paragraph :/


	2. Talent Labs

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Okay, so a few things:  
> Chapter will be out every Saturday from now on unless stuff gets really hectic. Either way, I'll try to get them out every Saturday.
> 
> There are some spoilers for v3 in here. Nothing for who dies or anything since this is an au, but spoilers for details about various characters that wouldn't be revealed in the game right away. 
> 
> This is some bizarre amalgamation between the English and Japanese versions. I used first names when referring to the characters, but when they actually talk about each other I'll use their Japanese versions since it wouldn't really be proper for then to all call each other by their first names.  
> Also if I call Ouma "Oma" I'll probably get shot. :P
> 
> Anyway, thank you for the support. I didn't really expect to get any comments on my first chapter, so it makes me really happy that people like it and want to see more.

With everyone in the class at least introduced to one another, there wasn’t much left to do besides wait for homeroom to begin. Shuichi, not sure what else to do and feeling a bit awkward standing around, took a seat next to Kaito, who had already claimed the third row window seat for himself after Tsumugi had proclaimed that it was “the protagonist seat”. He watched his fellow classmates, Angie having already struck up a conversation with Korekiyo, and Miu intently examining Keebo.

What an eccentric group. Shuichi wasn’t really sure if he fit in with such energetic students, but it did seem like there were number of more subdued people as well.  And Tsumugi had purposely described herself as plain, so maybe it was okay if he didn’t stand out too much.

Eventually, as it got closer and closer to the start of class, the rest of the students began taking their seats as well. Kaede took a seat on Shuichi’s other side, which he was thankful for. He glanced around at the other students near him. Tenko had taken a seat in front of him, deliberately positioning herself between Tsumugi and Maki, apparently refusing to sit next to any “degenerate males”. She was apparently trying to get the attention of Himiko in front of her, but the shorter girl was too absorbed in a conversation with Angie next to her.

Behind Shuichi sat Kokichi, who had apparently decided to sit in the back despite his short stature, and Shuichi wasn’t quite sure how to feel about that, especially when Kokichi started pushing on the back of his chair with his feet.

“Saihara-chan! I can’t see with your hat in the way! Take it off!” Kokichi whined exaggeratedly, and Shuichi decided against commenting that he was way taller than him even without his hat, though fortunately, Kaito had him covered.

“Cut it out, you brat!” Kaito shoved Kokichi’s legs away from Shuichi, and Kokichi finally relented, settling back in his seat with a pout.

To Shuichi’s side, Kaede was glancing nervously at the clock on the wall, and it was only then that Shuichi noticed that it was already after 8:00, and their homeroom teacher was still not present. That was rather strange. Hope’s Peak was supposed to be a prestigious high school, so for the teacher to be late, and on the first day too...It was pretty weird.

The situation only got stranger when, 5 minutes after the start of homeroom, their apparent teacher raced into the room with a massive coffee mug in one hand and a binder in the other. She had seemed to make some sort of effort to look proper with a suit and pencil skirt, but the effect was offset by her red hair, which was messily tied up in a bun that look more like it was leaking hair. She flung the binder onto her desk and took her place in the front of the classroom.

“Hello, hello class!” She waved rather unprofessionally at her students, all of whom had gone quiet at the arrival of their teacher. “So…my name’s Hamamoto.” With the click of a button, she shut off the LED screen at the front of the classroom, leaving only the chalkboard underneath, and wrote her name in surprisingly neat characters.

Shuichi kind of expected one of his classmates to say something, given that more than one of them had seemed to lack a filter, but all he heard was Kokichi’s quiet giggling from behind him.

However, it quickly became clear exactly way Hamamoto was chosen to be their teacher despite her eccentricities, for she seemed to know exactly what she was doing, with a clear confident voice and thorough but not drawn out explanation of the class rules alone. Shuichi found himself wondering if she had been the ultimate teacher. Plenty of the ultimates who went through Hope’s Peak ended up teaching there eventually, and she looked young enough to have graduated in the last 12 years.

As it turned out, the ultimates of the class were most likely all at different levels in various fields, and so Hamamoto handed out a packet of questions meant to gauge everyone’s aptitude.

Kaito groaned beside him. “Man, I thought the whole point of Hope’s Peak was to do talent stuff, not basic studies.”

Shuichi had made sure to look into details of the new Hope’s Peak academy before he sent back his acceptance letter, but he could understand why Kaito wouldn’t know that. Everyone knew about the structure of the old Hope’s Peak academy and the variety of factors that had led up to the tragedy, it was taught basically every year in varying amounts of detail. But there was less information available on the reopened academy, probably since the new version wasn’t the catalyst for billions of deaths.

On that pleasant note, Shuichi opened his packet and began filling out answer. The first few questions were simple, but as he progressed, he became less sure of his answers, checking over the questions multiple times to make sure he hadn’t missed some crucial details. By the end of each section, he had no idea what the right answers would be, or even what the questions meant.

When the teacher finally decided enough time had passed, Shuichi had finished everything he understood and was debating the idea of writing some sort of guess for the answers he didn’t know, at the risk of making himself sound stupid. He gave up, placing his pencil down and folding the packet back to the front. Kaito and Kaede did the same, and glancing to the side, while Shuichi couldn’t read the answers Kaito had written (he wasn’t a cheater, after all), he could tell that for all his complaining, the astronaut had filled out every answer in the first section, at least.

Suddenly, Shuichi felt even less confident than he had before, glancing at the two blanks he had left on the first page. He covered it with his arm. From what he could see of Kaede’s work, she had left more questions blank than he had, but each of her answers were longer than his and in much neater writing.

Trying to ignore the anxiety in his chest, he passed his papers forward to Tenko and settled back in his seat.

 

Lunchtime eventually arrived, and Shuichi got up from his seat along with his classmates. Hamamoto was still in the classroom, so Shuichi guessed that she was probably their only teacher, as regular classes ended after lunch. If that was the case, she probably was the ultimate teacher, if she knew enough about every subject to teach it.

Apparently, Hope’s Peak had a cafeteria, which did make sense, it would be difficult to bring any lunch from home when everyone lived in the dorms. Shuichi’s old school hadn’t had a cafeteria though, so walking into the crowded area was a bit of a shock for him. It kind of reminded him of some pre-tragedy high school movies he’d seen from the west.

He got a lunch tray full of rice and miso soup and looked around the crowded cafeteria, not too pleased at being in such a large crowd. For a moment, he wondered where he was supposed to sit, until he caught sight of Kaito waving him over to a table that the entire class was sitting at.

Shuichi carried his lunch over and took a seat next to Kaito, setting  his tray on the table. He was surprised that everyone had chosen to sit together, they weren’t exactly all friends yet, but he decided it made a bit of sense, as they all only knew the other students in their class. Even Maki and Ryoma were there, albeit seated a bit away from the rest of the group.

It didn’t take long for him to realize the fully reason everyone was sitting together, as he watched a number of the other students giving their table a wide berth, with a few cold glances towards the class. Of course, most of the students in the school were talent developers, and they were probably not too inclined to interact with those who already had talents like him and his friends.

It was better than the old reserve course system, he supposed, and it gave anybody the chance to find and develop a talent without the excessive fees and segregation from main course students, but Shuichi supposed that there was no way to fully prevent animosity between the two groups.

He was broken out of his thoughts by the conversations of his classmates.

“Man, this food sucks ass,” Miu said with a snort, pushing her tray away. “A gorgeous girl genius deserves way better food than this.”

From across the table, Kirumi smiled. “I would be happy to make lunches for everyone. If you tell me what you would like, I can prepare something for dinner.”

“Is that really okay?” Kaede asked. “I mean, there are fifteen of us, won’t it be difficult to make a unique meal for everybody?”

“Not at all, I would be happy to prepare meals for you.”

“Oooh,  ooh!” Kokichi raised his hand in the air. “So for dinner, I’d like some Fugu—you can make that right? And a crème brulee! And some pasta with white sauce-“

“Bwahahaha white sauce h—“

“Um…” Kaede tried to take control of the conversation again. “You don’t have to go out of your way to make anything for us. It’s okay, I’ll eat whatever.”

But Kirumi had already written down Kokichi’s order. Apparently, she could make fugu after all.

 

After lunch was the time for talent honing, and Kaito couldn’t be more excited. There were barely 50 ultimates in the whole school, and as such each of them had a specific lab dedicated to their talents. As for Kaito, he couldn’t wait to see his own lab and when he arrived, he was not disappointed.

Really, the entire place was awesome! In the center was a mock control panel for a space shutter, which was accurate as far as Kaito could tell, along with a seat to match. There seemed to be a wall that could wrap around it as well, so it could feel like a real space ship, albeit without the g-force, though Kaito was sure there was a system set up to train for that too. Or maybe something built in.

Rushing around the rest of the area, he found a mock-up of a space vehicle to practice using, a large, smooth metal floor that Kaito could guess was a precision air-bearing floor for moving objects in zero gravity, and a sizable pool which, judging by the space vehicle model at the bottom, was meant to be a natural buoyancy laboratory.

And that wasn’t even taking into account the décor. The walls of the lab was a large mural of the galaxy and while it seemed to be more of an afterthought as the layout wasn’t accurate, he appreciated the thought.

Really, where did the school get the money for all this? It had to have cost a fortune, and one that Kaito hoped he wouldn’t be paying for. Then again, a prestigious high school like this probably got a lot of funds.

Well, whatever! It was here and that was what mattered.

Though he would have liked to try out his lab right away, he was also interested in seeing the rest of the labs. And so he returned to the hallway.

His lab was near the gym, which made sense as he still had a lot of physical training to do. And he had to improve his Russian, but the library wasn’t all that close by.

The first lab he checked near the gym was the one for the ultimate track star, who wasn’t in Kaito’s class and was apparently not interested in talking to him, Tenko’s lab (she didn’t want to talk to him either) and one other lab with a plain red door.

He wasn’t sure whose lab he expected it to be, but this certainly wasn’t it. Maki opened the door slightly, standing so he couldn’t see inside the door and giving him a cold look.

“What do you want?” she asked with irritation.

Kaito wasn’t deterred. “Hey, no need to be like that! I just wanted to meet my new lab neighbors, is that too much to ask?”

In response, Maki closed the door in his face.

Oh, well, he’d tried. Though he couldn’t help but wonder why the ultimate caregiver would have a lab next to the gym.

Well, kids were pretty rowdy. She would need to have a lot of stamina to look after a lot of them.

Satisfied with this conclusion, Kaito returned to his own lab.

 

He spent so long preoccupied with the gear in his lab that he was surprised when the bell rang signaling the end of the school day. It was too bad that there had to be regular classes too, Kaito would much rather just do this all day.

He left the athletic wing of Hope’s Peak and made his way back to the central area. The hallways were pretty quiet, he assumed the other classes full of reserve students, or talent developers, he supposed, were still doing things like cleaning their classrooms.

He wondered who would clean their classroom. Kirumi, probably.

In the main area, he spotted Shuichi, standing in the middle of the hall and staring at his feet.

Was he okay? He looked kind of upset about something.

Kaito hurried over, deciding to hide any worry he had as best he could. It wasn’t very manly to worry over everything.

“Hey Saihara-kun! What’s up!”

Shuichi jumped a little, eyes still fixed to the ground. “Oh…hi Kaito.”

“What’s wrong?” he asked, now definitely sure that something had upset Shuichi.

“Oh, that’s” Shuichi absentmindedly reached up to pull at his hat, only to flinch slightly when he found it wasn’t there.

Oh. Oh that was it. Where was Shuichi’s hat?

Kaito asked Shuichi, who still wouldn’t look up from the ground. “Ouma-kun…took in and ran off.”

“That little—“ Kaito had known Kokichi for only a day and he already hated him. “You wait here, I’ll go get your hat back! Which way did he go?”

Shuichi looked a bit surprised, nearly pulling up his head in response. “R-really? Oh, thank you.” Shuichi pointed in the direction Kokichi had run off and Kaito immediately turned on his heals to race down the hallway, fully intent on giving Kokichi a piece of his mind.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm still building up the setting and characters. By the next chapter I should be getting into some more character interactions and the like, but this is a bit of a slow burn. Maybe I should tag it as such?  
> Also, no more indenting. But I did figure out how to get the line between paragraphs to work right.


	3. Feeling of Failure

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> New update! This story is always gonna be a bit of a slice of life, so there won't be a lot of action here.
> 
> Warning for panic attacks.
> 
> Oops it's a shorter chapter this time. :p I'm kinda busy with college stuff.

It didn’t take too long for Kaito to find Kokichi, if only because the other boy didn’t know he was being chased in the first place, and for a moment Kaito thought this would be an even easier task than he’d anticipated.

At least until Kokichi took off down the hall, waving Shuichi’s hat in the air, Kaito following along behind.

“Hey! Get back here you little shit!”

Kokichi was, however, way faster than anyone with such short legs should be, and apparently good at hiding too, because it only took five minutes for Kaito to completely lose him.

Kaito took a minute to catch his breath, resting one of his hands on a wall. Damn it, he shouldn’t be tired already! Too much time racing around his lab, perhaps? Well, he wasn’t about to give up, he’d told Shuichi he’d get his hat back and Kaito was a man of his word.

The end of the day bell rang and the classroom doors around him slide open, the other students giving him a wide berth, which he might have considered rude if it wasn’t beneficial for his Kokichi hunt.

Taking one last deep breath, Kaito hurried off again, maneuvering around the other students as he searched. Hope’s Peak was only so large, so he had to find Kokichi eventually. He was Kaito Momota, Luminary of the Star, and like hell was some little punk gonna best him!

Even so, it took another 30 minutes before he found Kokichi again, idling in an empty classroom like he didn’t have a care in the world.

The minute he saw Kaito, Kokichi leapt back up! “Wahh! Momota-chan’s here to kill me!” His face certainly did look scared, though Kaito had a feeling he was anything but.

“Give it back!” He lunged for the smaller boy, who took the opportunity to run out of the classroom’s second door, Kaito in hot pursuit.

And finally, it seemed that Kaito had finally caught a bit of luck, as the hallway they were in was a dead end, leaving Kokichi with nowhere to run.

Kokichi, despite being backed into a corner, had apparently quit his fearful act with only a cheeky smile on his face.

“Hey Kaito! Catch!” And Kokichi hurled Shuichi’s hat like a Frisbee right into Kaito’s face.

“Wha—hey!” Kaito fumbled to catch the hat and looked down just in time to see Kokichi slip by him, taking off down the hall again.

What an ass! Well, at least Kaito had gotten what he came for. He looked over the hat, checking for damage. It looked fine, so hopefully Kokichi hadn’t done anything to it.

Even so, to his embarrassment, he was out of breath and only really felt like he’d been bested by Kokichi. Even if he’d succeeded in the end, he couldn’t shake the feeling that he’d actually lost in the end.

 

Shuichi stood in the hallway, keeping his eyes on his shoes. Up until now, his first day at Hope’s Peak had been pretty good, all things considered. And now this had happened. Here he was, in a new place surrounded by strangers and feeling naked without the one thing that could hide him from the world.

In the back of his mind, Shuichi knew it was far from a healthy mentality to have, but standing here, he felt as though all of his defenses had been pulled away too quickly, like the sting of a band-aid being ripped off.

Either way, he could probably make it back to his dorm from here without having to look anyone directly in the eyes. If he could just make it back…

Unfortunately, the world had other plans as it seemed, for at that moment, the bell for the Talent Developer classrooms rang, and throngs of students poured out into the hallways, making their way around Shuichi.

Oh.

Realizing he couldn’t stay here in the middle of the hall, Shuichi tried to move, too hesitant to actually push his way through the crowds, so he inched forward behind the backs of a couple students who were more occupied with their conversation than with moving. He could feel eyes on his back, the eyes of students who were envious of anyone who already had a talent and who sat at the table with all the main course kids. Eyes of people

Who

Hated

Him.

_You don’t understand anything you don’t understand you little brat you’ve ruined everything everything you understand_

As his breath caught in his throat, Shuichi realized that he had to get out of here.

Shuichi tried to squeeze his way through the crowd without actually bumping into anybody, having to constantly move aside to avoid the other students. Their conversations were drowned out by his ragged breathing and the ringing in his ears and he had to get out of here right now before he drowned in the noise his own body was making.

He reached a hand forward, trying to find a wall or something else solid to lean on when instead he felt someone grab his hand.

Shuichi yelped slightly, and the person’s grip relaxed a bit, even as they tugged gently on his arm, guiding him forward. With his head down, Shuichi followed, clinging onto the other person as if they were a lifeline, worried that at any moment they would let go and leave him here.

And then they were outside, hurrying down the stairs to the nearly empty school grounds, Shuichi breathing in the outside air like he’d resurfaced from under water.

It was as the other person guided him over to a bench that he finally realized who it was.

“A-akamatsu-san?”

A million thoughts raced through his mind, though for some reason the one that stood out was how embarrassing it was to be holding a girl’s hand like this. Even so, Kaede didn’t seem to be letting go and so Shuichi didn’t either, even though he was sure his own hand was quite sweaty and not at all pleasant to hold.

“Saihara-kun, are you alright?” Kaede asked, taking a seat next to him on the bench. Shuichi took a few breaths to calm down and make sure his voice was steady before answering.

“Yeah, I’m fine. Thanks.” He wasn’t sure how to properly look at Kaede without looking into her eyes, so he fixed his gaze on his lap.

Kaede took a moment to respond. “You don’t really seem like you’re okay, no offense.”

Shuichi wasn’t quite sure what to say in response, so he continued looking at his lap.

“If you don’t want to talk about it, that’s okay…”

“No, it’s fine, I just—have trouble looking people in the eyes, that’s all.” Shuichi subconsciously reached up for his hat, only to flinch when he remembered it wasn’t there.

Kaede seemed to understand however, as she was silent for a long moment. In the background, Shuichi could hear the sound of a fountain flowing. It was relaxing.

And so Shuichi told her briefly about the case that had earned him his title and all the problems that had stemmed from it. Kaede listened in silence, still holding his hand. Shuichi’d never really had any close friends before, and he wasn’t sure if this was the sort of thing to tell to someone he’d met only this morning, but Kaede had a comforting presence, the kind that could make anyone open up.

“That sounds rough,” Kaede said when he’d finished. “Have-have you considered talking to someone about it? Like, a therapist or something?”

Shuichi frowned. He’d considered it in the past, and his uncle had recommended it as well, but his uncle had already done so much by taking Shuichi in. And he didn’t want the news that he went to therapy to hurt his uncle’s reputation.

But now that he basically lived at Hope’s Peak, maybe he could try. Even so, he wasn’t sure, and he said as much to Kaede.

Again, there was a short silence as the two of them thought.

“Well, would you be willing to go a little bit at a time? Like, maybe you can try taking your hat off around your friends?”

Friends. Were they already friends? Shuichi wasn’t sure. But maybe it wouldn’t be so bad, looking in the eyes of a kind person like Kaede. And so, in a moment of bravery, Shuichi pulled his head up to look into her eyes.

It wasn’t as bad as he thought it would be. Kaede had a kind face and kind, purple eyes. Although, after a moment of staring into them, Shuichi felt awkward for an entirely different reason, and let his eyes drift down to his lap again.

At that moment, Kaito burst into the air, holding Shuichi’s hat up triumphantly and panting. “Hey, Saihara! I got your hat back!”

Shuichi, surprised, immediately let go of Kaede’s hand.

“Oh, am I interrupting something?”

Shuichi and Kaede both stammered their denial in unison, which Kaito seemed to find amusing more than anything. He handed the hat back to Shuichi.

Shuichi looked down at the hat grasped in his hands. He was glad to have it back, that was true, but it kind of felt like an admission of failure, to put it on again. He did so anyway, and so he felt his shields rise back up.

“Thank you, Kaito. Thank you, Kaede.”

“No problem! That Ouma is one tricky guy though!”

Shuichi adjusted his hand. He suddenly felt quite tired, after everything that had happened today. It certainly had been something, and a mixed bag for sure.

The sun was setting in the distance, and so the three of them headed back towards their dorms together.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If you wanna interpret this as shipping, go ahead. This fic won't really have any explicit ships in it though.


	4. Class Representative

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A longer chapter this time.  
> Gonta doesn't speak like Tarzan in this, sorry/you're welcome, whichever your prefer.
> 
> Chapter 2 spoilers incoming!

Gonta knew why he had been selected for Hope’s Peak Academy, that was for certain. Because Gonta knew all about bugs. He had studied them growing up in the wilderness and he had studied them in laboratories back in the city. He’d learned all about the many species of bugs living in Japan as well as many bug species outside of the country. Their mating patterns, life cycles and lifespans, habitats, diets, and more. Gonta had dedicated his life to studying insects.

But Gonta also knew that because he wasn’t a smart boy, that was the only thing he was good at. And while working with bugs did require some other skills, Gonta was sure that he still could never live up to the abilities of his peers.

Gonta looked back at his paper. It had been less than a week of school, and already he was struggling. At this rate, he would never become a gentleman.

Well, maybe he could figure it out. He looked back at the first equation. There were two tens, but one of the tens was for adding numbers together, he was pretty sure. Because one ten was in number form and the other in kanji. But how to add the three there to the ten if the ten also had an _x_ with it. The _x_ was a western symbol, he was pretty sure. And that meant that it was unknown.

Maybe if he had 10 cages of bugs and there were 43 bugs total, then how many in each cage? But that still left 3 more bugs that were supposed to be included? And if he already knew the total number of bugs, it would be useful to just look into the cages and see how many bugs. Where did the extra three bugs come from and why were they included in the total?

Gonta’s head hurt. Maybe he should get help from his classmates, since they were all probably smarter than him. On his left was Miu, who had already finished her far more complicated-looking set of problems and was now drawing something in the margins that looked like a diagram. Miu was good at inventions, so she was probably good at math too. But he couldn’t ask her for help, because when he watched movies and stuff, the gentlemen were always supposed to be the ones to help the ladies. So if he asked Miu for help, he wouldn’t be helping her and then he wouldn’t be a good gentleman.

Gonta had chosen to sit in the back due to his height and on his right side was a wall, so the only person left was Rantaro in front of him. He was still working, and Gonta didn’t want to bother him, but he also didn’t want to not learn his maths and then not be smart enough to be a gentleman. So he lightly tapped Rantaro on the shoulder.

“Amami-kun…”

Rantaro swiveled his head around to face him. The other boy seemed to be a calm, nice person, so he was probably already a great gentleman. “What is it, Gonta-kun?”

“Gonta isn’t sure how to do this.” Gonta frowned at his blank paper.

That got Rantaro’s full attention, apparently, as flipped around to sit backwards in his chair to look at Gonta’s paper. “I’d be glad to help.”

And Rantaro was, as it turned out, very good at helping Gonta. Hamamoto didn’t seem to mind the students working together or talking, and so Gonta decided it was probably fine to have help like this. And so Rantaro patiently explained what to do with each and every problem, until all of the answers were neatly  filled in and Gonta felt a little more confident in his studies.

“Amami-kun is very good at this.”

Rantaro rubbed the back of his head sheepishly. “Oh, I wouldn’t say that. I used to help my younger sisters with their homework, so I guess you could say I had a lot of practice.”

“Oh! Amami-kun has sisters?”

“Yep. Twelve of them, actually.”

That was a lot of sisters. Gonta thought it might be nice to have siblings, but he had been young and then the Tragedy had happened. So no siblings for him.

 

Once, a very long time ago, before Gonta could remember, his family had been very strong and very rich and they’d had lots of nice stuff. He had been an infant then, and he’d had a mother and father and their servants.

And then all sorts of terrible things started happening, and because his parents were so powerful, the Ultimate Despair people had wanted them dead. They lost all their money too, when their house and boat were burned up and so they’d had to run far, far away where they would be safe.

Except Gonta’s parents and their servants, now a part of Gonta’s family, were not very good at surviving in the wilderness, and they couldn’t get food or anything from anywhere. So lots of people died and the rest learned to survive as best they could.

But Gonta only ever remembered the forest, and so he was very good at surviving and very good at finding things to eat and places to drink, and shelters when one of them got destroyed. And he learned all about animals, especially bugs. They’d have to eat the bugs, sometimes, which Gonta thought was sad because he liked them very much. Bugs were hard working, and they made really nice nests and they all worked together to keep their group healthy. Sort of like Gonta’s family.

And then the world had become safe again or something, because everyone returned back to society, even though they were poor now, and the rest of Gonta’s family was very good at adapting, but Gonta was not. And he tried to be a good gentlemen so his family would be happy, but he wasn’t very good at it. Gentlemen were supposed to wear nice shoes, but most shoes didn’t fit Gonta’s feet and they were very uncomfortable, so he didn’t like wearing them. And most gentlemen had nice, neat hair, but Gonta’s hair was all messy, and it had to stay that way so he could incubate bugs in it. Though he was pretty sure that wasn’t something that gentlemen did.

Gonta knew that he was not a good gentlemen and not a smart boy and that even though his parents loved him very much, they were probably very disappointed.

 

It was four days into the first semester at Hope’s Peak Academy, and Kaede was more than ready to get to know all of her classmates.

They were an unusual bunch, sure, but most of them seemed nice enough, or at the very least were tolerable. Shuichi was a sweet, if very nervous person, and for all his energy, Kaito seemed like a great friend she thought as she listened to him proclaim Shuichi as his sidekick.

“You see, Saihara, I’m gonna train you to be the best possible sidekick so that nobody’ll be able to take your hat again!”

“Oh! Um…okay?”

“Yeah! You just gotta be fast enough to hold your hat above your head and then Ouma will never get it!”

That did make Kaede giggle a little, though she quickly hid it behind  her hand, not wanting the two to think she was eavesdropping.

Later, she had seen the two of them doing pushup out on the school grounds during the evening, and what she meant by that was Shuichi did pushups while Kaito rested on his elbows and watched him.

Then there was Rantaro, who sat next to her and who seemed like a good person, because he had helped Gonta with his work the other day. Gonta seemed earnest too, she decided.

And as for Miu behind her.

“Hey, titless! Pass these forward!”

Well, she’d had more than enough of Miu’s attitude. What was she talking about anyway. Kaede had breasts, and they were quite a good size if she did say so herself! In fact, they probably looked bigger than Miu’s from most angles. Who did she think she was!

Kaede puffed up her cheeks and grabbed the papers Miu was passing up with a bit more force than necessary, to which Miu only whimpered in response.

There were Ryoma and Maki, who didn’t like to participate in their discussions at lunch, even though she’d tried to engage them a couple of times. Kirumi cleaned the classroom every day and brought meals for everyone despite Kaede’s protests that she didn’t have to do so. Tenko was cute, she thought, though she had also punched Kaito in the chest at one point for accidently touching her hair. She liked Himiko, Kaede was pretty sure, but the smaller girl didn’t seem interested, preferring instead to speak to Angie, who talked about Atua an awful lot.

Keebo was a robot, but he seemed human enough, and Kokichi wouldn’t stop tormenting him, as he’d apparently made it a game during lunch too see how many grains of rice he could shove into the cracks in Keebo’s body before the robot noticed and got upset. Kokichi was definitely a pain, and he’d also upset Shuichi, which she didn’t like, but at least he hadn’t done anything too bad yet.

At the moment, he wasn’t in the classroom, even though class had begun some time ago, which Kaede was pretty sure was not a good sign.

She thought on the rest of her classmates. Korekiyo was strange, more interested in watching the others than interacting with them, but she didn’t think he was a bad person. And then there was Tsumugi, who didn’t really stand out that much, though Kaede certainly wanted to include her anyway.

Confident with her basic analysis of her classmates, Kaede sat back and focused on her work, up until Hamamoto interrupted everyone with an announcement.

“Ok, ok everyone!” Their teacher clapped her hands a bit to get everyone’s attention. Really, so far, she hadn’t made that big an impact, being content to teach the material and let the students do the rest. Well, Kaede supposed that Hope’s Peak was all about independence for students.

“I figure, since we’ve all gotten to know each other a bit, it’s time to decide on the class rep!”

Apparently, that was all their teacher was going to say on the matter, once again content to let her students decide amongst themselves.

For a brief moment, there was quiet. So Kaede decided to speak.

“Um, shouldn’t it be Tojo-san? She’s been taking care of us all week.”

Kirumi smiled politely at Kaede. “I appreciate the offer, Akamatsu-san, but I do not necessarily need a formal leadership position to take care of this class.”

Kaede nodded in reply, before realizing something else that was probably important to bring up. “Shouldn’t we wait for Ouma-kun? This is something for the whole class to discuss, isn’t it?”

In response, Miu scoffed. “It’s Shota’s own fault for being late, who gives a shit?”

A number of students nodded in response, and Kaede got the feeling that nobody really cared if Kokichi was absent. He certainly wasn’t well-liked as it was.

To her surprise, however, the next person to speak was Shuichi, who stood up tentatively. “Um, maybe Akamatsu-san would make a good rep, I think. Or Momota-kun.”

Kaito bumped Shuichi on the back with perhaps a bit too much force as he stumbled a bit. “That’s my sidekick!” Kaede, meanwhile, was busy thinking about the suggestion.

Class rep, huh? Well, she wasn’t opposed to the idea. In fact, it would be kind of nice to help out her classmates and maintain order.

“Well, I’ll be class rep if other people think I should.”

“It should be Akamatsu-san! No way is that degenerate becoming our rep!”

“Really, we’re gonna elect miss no-tits!”

A bit of bickering started up amongst the group, until eventually Shuichi nervously suggested doing a vote, which ended up being a fairly simple system of writing a name on a slip of paper.

Kaede couldn’t help but feel a surge of pride when she saw the nine pieces of paper with her name on them. There were three for Kaito, one for Kirumi, and one for Angie for some reason.

Well, it seemed fair enough, and there wasn’t a situation in which Kokichi’s vote would have made the difference, so Kaede was more than fine to take up her role.

She smiled at her classmates. “Thanks, everyone! I’m glad to be your class rep.”

Several of the others applauded politely with various degrees of enthusiasm. Tenko practically gave her a standing ovation.

Unfortunately, the moment was interrupted by the sound of the classroom door flying open, and everyone turned to fix their eyes on Kokichi, who strutted into the classroom as if nothing was wrong. Kaede glance over at Hamamoto, who didn’t seem to be paying much attention. Hands-off teaching, she supposed.

As the new class rep, Kaede decided to take charge of the situation. “Where have you been?”

Kokichi smiled cheekily. “Aww, did  you guys miss me! I know I’m your favorite classmate, but you don’t have to get so upset.”

Kaede puffed out her cheeks. “Ah geez, Ouma-kun, be serious.”

Kokichi’s smile grew, and then it grew a little too wide. “Well, if you insist, I suppose I can tell you that I decided to pick the lock to the teacher’s office.”

“What the hell, that’s illegal!” Kaito butted in, giving a quick look to the teacher, who was watching them but not saying anything.

“Yeah, yeah, details.” Kokichi said. “But while I was in there, I decided to have a little looksies at some of your files, and you’ll never believe the juicy details I’ve learned about some of yo—“

Kokichi didn’t get a chance to finish before of all people, Maki stepped forward, seized Kokichi by his scarf, and dragged him out of the classroom, slamming the sliding door shut behind her.

For a moment, everyone stood and stared, before rushing towards the door collectively, some with the intent to open it and other with the intent to listen.

“We have to go out! That degenerate Ouma-san is probably harassing Harukawa-san!”

“I think it might be the opposite,” Rantaro said.

“Hey, if Shota and Harucuck wanna get it on, I say let em!”

As the others bickered, Kaede pressed her ear to the door. She had, after all, trained her ears to pick up the subtlest of sounds and so she could make out the conversation on the other side of the door without much difficulty.

“Well…are you going to kill me?” It was Kokichi’s voice, though he sounded a bit strange.

Kill? What is…

“Shut up.” Maki’s voice was a low growl than made Kaede shiver a bit.

“I mean, that is what you do, isn’t it? Miss assassin…”

Assassin? What? Wasn’t Maki…

Kaede didn’t have any more time to think as she heard Kokichi make a pained sound and decided that enough was enough. She shoved open the door and nearly threw herself out into the hall, her classmates tumbling out behind her.

Maki had a hand wrapped around Kokichi’s throat, holding him slightly off the ground as he struggled against her grip. However, as Kaede exited the classroom, she whipped her  head around, fixing a venomous glare on her classmates instead. She let go of the small boy, who stumbled back against the wall, took a couple of steps backwards, and took off down the hall without so much as a glance backwards.

For a second, everyone just stared once again. The first one to react was Gonta.

“Ouma-kun! Are you okay!” He rushed over to Kokichi’s side. The other boy was slouched against the wall, holding his throat and panting.

“What the hell…” Kaito mumbled beside Kaede, staring down the hallway that Maki had gone down.

Behind her, Miu said something about this being “some kinky shit”, but Kaede opted to ignore her, taking a few steps towards Kokichi.

“You guys came to save me! Wow, you must love me after all! I’m so touched I could cry!” Kokichi’s eyes certain did look watery and his voice had gone up an octave, but Kaede suspected that it was for a different reason.

“What happened,” she asked, trying to be calm in the situation.

Kokichi pasted a smile back on his face as he looked up at her. “But you already know that, don’t you, Akamatsu-chan!”

She wondered how he could possibly know she had been listening in, before realizing that her bursting out of the classroom at just the right time was probably quite the give away.

“Well, since you know, why don’t you tell them? Nobody believes me anyway!”

Oh? It had to be her.

She was the class rep, now after all. And this was certainly important information. And so Kaede turned back towards her classmates to deliver the news.

“Maki Harukawa…is the ultimate assassin.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Right now, there's a lot of focus on some of the game's more major characters, just to set things up. But I hope to give everyone the spotlight at some point.


	5. Sidekicks and Friends

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Kaito interacts with his classmates.

According to Kaito’s phone, there were only five minutes left until the start of homeroom, so he couldn’t just wait silently any longer. So he knocked on the door again.

This time, at least, the door actually opened after he banged on it for a couple minutes and Maki stared out at him through a tiny crack, face fixed in a cold glare.

“What do you want?”

Kaito was not one to be deterred, and he certainly wasn’t afraid, not of a girl so much smaller than him. “I was waiting for you! It’s almost class time after all.”

Maki stared at him, her face a mixture of something between disgust and confusion, before she slammed the door shut.

Well, that could’ve gone better. But he was Kaito Momota, Luminary of the Star, and he was definitely gonna get Maki to come to class.

He banged on the door for several more minutes, but didn’t get an answer, so instead he leaned back against the wall, humming a bit to himself as he waited.

Ten long, boring minutes passed, and then twenty, until Kaito was pretty sure homeroom was nearly over. Well, he could make up any work he missed, this was more important. As his classmate and soon to be sidekick, Kaito was not going to let Maki be left out.

He knocked one more time, and to his surprise, Maki once again appeared.

“You’re still here.” It was an observation, not a question, even if Maki did look a bit surprised that he hadn’t left already.

“Yep!”

Maki narrowed her eyes. “Why? Just go to class already and leave me alone.”

Well, she was actually speaking to him now, which Kaito decided to count as a victory. “I’m not gonna leave you here. Come to class!”

Maki’s face twisted into an even deeper scowl, as she finally opened the door more than just a crack. “Fine. Fine, whatever. I’ll go to class if it’ll get you to stop banging on my door.”

Success! Kaito gave himself a mental pat on the back as he walked out of the dorms, Maki lagging along behind him.

 

The two of them managed to reach the class in between class periods, which didn’t mean much since they only had one teacher. Kaito strolled forward into the classroom, which earned him a few looks, but it wasn’t until Maki entered that the room went totally silent.

Kaito looked around at his classmates, all of whom had their eyes fixed on Maki, and he had no doubt that they were still thinking about yesterday’s events. It wasn’t really that surprising, as between Maki’s talent and her choking of Kokichi, nobody was quite sure what to say to her.

Maki didn’t seem to care, however, as she walked over to her seat, face cold and movements stiff. Tenko, who was seated next to her, was the first one to speak.

“Welcome back Harukawa-san. Tenko is glad that you’ve returned.”

Apparently, Maki being a female was enough for Tenko to accept her, and so chatter among the class resumed, even if they were a little quieter. Maybe it would take some time for everyone to get used to Maki’s presence, but Kaito decided that he would be the one to help break the tension.

Kaito was right behind Maki, so that gave him plenty of opportunities to speak to her, even if she ignored most of the things he said. Kaito made small talk about things like favorite food and color, which he didn’t get many responses for. So he spoke about space instead. He was halfway through a lengthy description about comet tails and meteor showers when Maki finally spoke.

“Why are you doing this?”

“Doing what?”

“Talking to me. Like we’re friends or something.”

Kaito smiled to himself. “We are friends! You’re gonna be my new sidekick!”

“…what?”

“Yeah! Saihara” he patted Shuichi on the shoulder for emphasis “is already my sidekick, but you can be too.”

Maki finally turned to look over her shoulder at him, her expression one of disbelief. “What is wrong with you? Are you stupid? I’m an assassin, you know!”

The room once again went silent as Maki raised her voice. She stood up from her seat, looking down at Kaito with a frown.

“Yeah, I know that,” Kaito said.

“Then leave me alone!” And with that, Maki stalked out of the classroom, throwing the door shut behind her, leaving everyone staring in stunned silence.

 

The sun was beginning to set, which meant it was time for training with Shuichi, but Kaito decided to make a detour first, stopping once again at the girls side of the dormitory to knock on Maki’s door.

It took a few minutes of incessant banging before the girl finally opened the door, all the way this time.

There was fire in her eyes. “Do you want to die?”

Kaito was definitely not scared of her at all, even if he did take a half step back. He continued their conversation from before. “Even if you’re an assassin, I don’t think you’re a bad person.”

Maki’s anger seemed to die away. “Why? Why do you think that?”

“It’s a gut instinct.”

“I tried to kill Ouma!”

“I bet you wouldn’t have, though, right?”

Maki shook her head in disbelief. “What would make you think that.”

“Like I said, it’s a gut instinct.”

“That sounds really stupid.”

“No it’s not! You gotta trust your gut!” Kaito was not going to back down now.

The conversation faltered for a moment, so Kaito took the opportunity. “Do you wanna come train with Saihara and me?” He beamed at her.

For a moment, Maki said nothing. Then, she signed to herself, deflating somewhat. “Sure. I guess.”

Kaito once again decided that this was progress.

And so that was how the three of them ended up out on the school grounds doing sit-ups in surprisingly comfortable silence.

 

Kaito liked to think of himself as a hero, even if it was a bit childish, and a hero’s job was to help those in need. In this case, Kaito decided to take it upon himself to befriend his classmates, no matter how antagonistic they might be. And Kaito wasn’t the type of person to give up once he set his mind to something.

So that was how he came to be standing in front of yet another door, prepared once again to initiate operation Turn-his-classmates-into-sidekicks.

This time, the door opened as soon as he knocked, and Kokichi poked his head out from the room.

“Wow! My beloved Momota-chan has come to see me! Could it be that you’ve fallen for me?”

Somehow, Kaito already had a feeling that this would be more difficult than with Maki.

“Wha-no! I just…” Well, Kaito wasn’t sure what to say. “I just came to talk to you.”

Kokichi’s face twisted into a pout. “Aww, how come? Are you still mad at me for stealing Saihara-chan’s hat?”

“No, I’m not mad.” For some reason, Kaito felt like he was talking to a child. “I just wanna say hello.”

“Don’t lie to me. I hate liars more than anything! It’s obvious why Momota-chan is actually here.”

Kaito wasn’t sure how to respond to that, so he stayed silent and let Kokichi continue.

“Momota-chan fancies himself as a hero, so he wants to do a good deed and interact with me just like he did for little miss assassin.”

Kaito sighed, not pleased that Kokichi wasn’t that far off from his motivations. This really wasn’t going too well. “Maybe I actually wanna talk to you. Isn’t that an option?”

Kokichi still looked annoyed. “No way! I haven’t given Momota-chan any reason to want to interact with me. But I guess that didn’t keep you from hanging out with assassin-chan.”

“Stop calling her that!”

“Why? That’s what she is, right?”

“No, it’s not! She’s Maki Harukawa! A human being!”

Kokichi rolled his eyes. “Whatever you say. But if you’re going to talk to me, at least be honest.”

“How can you say that you hate liars when you lie all the time yourself?”

“Nee-heehee. I was obviously lying when I said I hated liars. You’re so dumb, Momota-chan!”

Kaito’s head hurt, so he decided to cut right to the chase this time. “Hey, let me come in and we can hang out, okay.” He tried to push Kokichi aside gently to get into his room, which wasn’t that difficult given Kokichi’s tiny size.

“Wow, Momota-chan’s so forward!”

“Shut u—woah, what the hell!”

In the span of just over a week, Kokichi had apparently already managed to make a mess of his dorm room. A bunch of cardboard boxes full of paper were stuffed into one corner of the room, and in the center was a corkboard covered in thumbtacks and string, with a bunch of paper cutouts of him and his classmates tacked in the corner, which Kaito decided was a pretty weird thing to have. He noticed that Maki and Ryoma’s pictures had been placed above the rest of the pictures.

Aside from that, Kokichi for some reason had like three model helicopters and a stupid looking plastic horse head that he’d set on his bed.

Really, Kaito didn’t know what else he should have expected.

Kokichi danced around his room and plopped down on his bed, somehow not landing on any of his weird stuff. “Do you like my room, Momota-chan! Since you were so eager to come in here.”

“What even is all this shit?”

“Well,” Kokichi flashed a smile that really didn’t feel like a smile. “Obviously, I’m making plans to brainwash all of my classmates into being my loyal subordinates!”

Kaito didn’t believe that for one moment, but he decided he really didn’t want to know about Kokichi’s weird plans.”

“But now that you’ve seen my secret work, you’ll have to die!”

“Wahh!” Somehow, while Kaito was thinking, Kokichi had appeared right in front of his face, creepy grin and all. Kaito had to instinctively resist the urge to push the other boy backwards. “Cut it out!”

“There’s only one way for you to leave this room alive.” Kokichi bounced backwards, once again deftly maneuvering around the piles of stuff on his floor. “And that’s for you to beat me in a game!”

Well, that wasn’t quite the direction that Kaito had expected from this to go, but he was pretty sure that he didn’t have anything to worry about to begin with. Kokichi was significantly shorter than him and he looked skinny enough that Kaito was pretty sure he could down him with a single punch if he needed to. Not that he would, Kokichi had to be lying about killing him.

Kokichi, meanwhile, had pulled two game boards out from under his bed. “Shogi or chess?”

“Um…” Kaito had played shogi a couple of times with his grandparents, so he at least knew the game. “Shogi, I guess.”

With a giggle, Kokichi set up the board and the two of them began to play.

Kaito had assumed himself to be at least decent at this game, as he’d beaten his grandparents a few times. However, he very quickly realized that either his grandparents hadn’t been that good to begin with, or Kokichi was just really good himself. He barely seemed to be paying attention as he moved around the board, picking up Kaito’s pieces.

“So, Momota-chan,” Kokichi said, fiddling with one of Kaito’s captured pieces. “I was wondering, what do you see in miss assassin anyway?”

Kaito opted to ignore Kokichi’s continued nickname for her. “I think she’s a student just like us. She deserves to be treated with respect too.”

For a second, Kaito thought Kokichi looked pretty annoyed, before he snapped up another one of Kaito’s pawns.

The game continued in silence for a few more minutes, if only because Kaito was too busy trying to concentrate to make conversation, until Kokichi spoke again.

“What’s Momota-chan’s favorite shogi piece?”

“Huh?”

“I think you can tell a lot about a person by their favorite piece, don’t you. So what’s your favorite?”

Kaito had never really thought about it before to be honest, so he didn’t have a response.

“I bet it’s the lance, right? Because Momota-chan is just like a lance, always looking straight ahead!”

That sounded kind of poetic, Kaito decided, but he didn’t know much about such topics. “Well, what about you then? What’s your favorite piece?”

“It’s the king, obviously!”

Oh yeah, that made sense.

“That was a lie, though! It’s actually the knight!” As he spoke, Kokichi picked up his knight and took another once of Kaito’s pawns. “Check.”

Oops. Well, that wasn’t something that Kaito was expecting. He took note of the board situation. Nothing to take the knight with, and he couldn’t block because it was a knight. He moved his king up a row with some trepidation. He was pretty sure this game was almost over, anyways, and it had lasted what, five minutes?

However, the game didn’t end nearly as quickly as Kaito thought it would, as Kokichi continued taking Kaito’s pieces and placing them on his own side. It was getting a bit annoying, he should have checkmated him by now.

Maybe Kokichi was just toying with him! Making him think he had a chance or something, or maybe he had just taken pity on Kaito’s terrible shogi skills and was going easy on him.

Kokichi promoted another one of his lances, which Kaito always thought was a waste, because then it couldn’t move multiple spaces anymore. “You know, Momota-chan, at this point, you’re probably going to lose.”

Kaito huffed. No kidding.

“Maybe if you get on your hands and knees and bow, I’ll let you go. But you have to beg really hard, got it.”

“No way!” Kaito still had his pride, and like hell was he gonna throw it away to some strait-jacket wearing gremlin.

“Well, then the only other option is for you to join my secret organization!”

Great. Kaito was pretty sure that Kokichi’s organization was made up. Hell, maybe he was lying about his talent like Maki. It wouldn’t surprise him in the least.

“Nope, you’re gonna be my sidekick instead!”

Kokichi pouted comically. “I’m not going to be someone’s sidekick. If anything, you should be my subordinate!”

Kaito had expected as much, there was no way that Kokichi was going to agree to be anyone’s sidekick. Which meant there was only one compromise.

“In that case, you can be my friend!”

In a second, Kokichi’s face shifted from a comical frown to one that look strangely pensive. It only lasted for a moment though, before a smirk took its place. “Didn’t I say you shouldn’t lie about your motives! You don’t really want to be friends with me, I know that!”

“Yes I do!” Kaito stated boldly.

Kokichi narrowed his eyes. “And why is that? What about me made you want to be my friend? I haven’t done anything that would make you like me, so why. Explain, or I’ll know you’re lying!”

“Because my gut says you’re a good person.”

Kokichi giggled to himself, one hand over his mouth to hide his expression. “Well, if Momota-chan really wants to play friends with me, then I guess that’s fine. But you’ve got to listen to everything I say, okay!”

“Okay!”

Kokichi paused for a second, so Kaito continued.

“I’ll listen to you, if you want. I mean, I won’t DO everything you tell me to do, but if  you wanna talk, I’ll listen.”

“Aww Momota-chan found a loophole.” Kokichi’s tone was whiny, but there was a smile on his face, and Kaito had no idea what it meant, or even if it was real or not. “One more thing, though.”

“What?”

Kokichi moved his rook down to Kaito’s king. “I win.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> You know, I like to think that if everyone wasn't trapped in a killing game and Kokichi wasn't playing the role of the villian, that he and Kaito could be friends, or at least tease each other in a more lighthearted fashion.


	6. Moments

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for the support on the previous chapter! Next chapter might be a little longer so it might be up later. I know this one's a little shorter but I didn't have a lot of plans for it, so it ended up being mostly improv.

Shuichi hadn’t expected Kaito to invite Maki to their workout session, but he decided it was okay. Maki might be cold, and the second time the three of them had met together to exercise, she had sworn she was only doing it so that Kaito would stop bothering her, but at times, Shuichi thought he caught a slight smile on her face. And even when she finished her workout long before the other two, she still hung around, doing a few more exercise routines with ease.

Even so, he wasn’t entirely sure how to talk to Maki, and so most conversations between them went through Kaito first. Kaito talked about space a lot, which Shuichi didn’t really understand that well, but he was fine just listening. He was also eager to get to know both Shuichi and Maki, and it had come to the point where he would spend most of their exercise time lying on his stomach, trying to talk to an out of breath Shuichi.

The detective wasn’t quite sure why Kaito didn’t do much working out alongside them, as it had been his idea in the first place, but he didn’t mind too much. It felt good to work up a bit of a sweat every so often, after so many hours of sitting at a desk or in his talent room, looking over evidence.

He hadn’t been sure of what to think of his room at first. He didn’t consider his detective skills to be that great, and he still had plenty of misgivings when it came to pursuing the truth. But his lab wasn’t that bad, more of a collection of case files and forensic equipment, with a mock crime scene set up in one corner. He could handle all of that stuff. It was fine. And even if at some point he would surely have to work with actual perpetrators and victims, for now, he could handle this much.

He started placing his hat on the ground while they exercised, and it really wasn’t as bad as he thought it would have been, at least with Kaito there.

 

Shuichi wasn’t sure if Kokichi and Kaito were friends or not, but they certainly seemed to get along, albeit in a weird way. Kokichi hung around Kaito quite a lot and their back and forth banter certainly seemed to have a friendliness to it.

Shuichi supposed that it was in Kaito’s nature to want to befriend the people he thought needed friends, even if they were resistant at first like Maki or hard to get along with like Kokichi. Shuichi wasn’t sure what to think about Kokichi himself, he was certainly a strange person.

However, Kokichi never joined their exercise routine, and for that Shuichi had to admit he was thankful. He’d seen the way Maki and Kokichi interacted, and there was only so much Kaito could do to control the two of them.

The three of them sat together at lunch, however, with Kaito positioned between Kokichi and Maki and trying his best to prevent the former from flicking too many grains of rice at the increasingly annoyed latter. Shuichi sat across from Kaito, enjoying whatever meal Kirumi had prepared for the class that day.

He did hope that at least they would start to get along at some point.

 

Being the class rep was a great experience, even if Kaede wasn’t entirely sure how to utilize it.

She’d tried to offer her help to Kirumi, who spent what must have been hours in the classroom after the end of the day, meticulously cleaning every surface. But Kirumi had assured her that there was no need for that, she was perfectly fine cleaning up by herself, and so Kaede took that one as a defeat.

Her next order of business, which was still in its idea stage, was to hopefully get her classmates to bond a little more. Even if most of the class got along fairly well, there were still plenty of problems to sort out. And so she zeroed in on one in particular and resolved to do something to help.

Ryoma lingered outside the gym door with a look on his face that Kaede couldn’t quite read. He could certainly stand to interact more with the class. As she saw it, he spent quite a bit of his time off moping around the school, and as the class rep, it was her job to fix it.

“Hello, Hoshi-kun!”

Ryoma turned to look at her. “Hello, Akamatsu-san.”

Kaede had never so much as held a tennis racket in her life, but she supposed that there was always a time to start. “Do you want to play a game of tennis? There’s a count in there, right?”

Ryoma pulled his hat down over his head. “Sorry, but I’ve given up on tennis.”

Huh? “But aren’t you here because you’re the ultimate tennis pro?”

“I suppose that’s what Hope’s Peak has recognized me for. But if they’re expecting the ultimate tennis pro, I’m just going to disappoint them.”

He turned his back on Kaede. “I appreciate the effort, though, Akamatsu-san. I’m sure you’ll be a good class rep.” And with that, he left without looking back.

Kaede though that what he said was supposed to be a compliment, but it really didn’t feel like one to her. All she could do was add another mark to her apparent list of failures.

No. No, that wasn’t true. She could get Ryoma to interact with the class, she just had to try a little bit harder.

With new resolve, she set off back to her own lab. She was itching to play a song.

 

Himiko’s classmates were very loud and active people, and so dealing with them was a pain. Plus, most of them wouldn’t acknowledge her true talent. That was just rude.

Well, there were a few people who seemed to believe she was a real mage. Angie was one of them, as she had proclaimed on their first day of class that Himiko’s magic was a gift to her by Atua, and even if Himiko wasn’t sure what to think about her strange god, she was at least glad that someone recognized her powers. And even if Angie had a lot of energy, she wasn’t that troublesome for Himiko to deal with, as all she had to do was listen to her speak about her island and religion, which she could zone out of if she needed to recharge some of her magic.

The same couldn’t really be said about the other person who recognized her talent.

“Yumeno-san! Yumeno-san!”

If running away wasn’t so difficult, that was exactly what Himiko would have done.

Tenko sped up next to her, clutching a box in her hands for some reason. “Happy birthday, Himiko! Tenko made you a cake!”

Oh, so it was her birthday. Wait, no it wasn’t! Her birthday was in the winter, and it was way too warm outside for it to be winter. Also, it was April.

“But it’s not my birthday.”

Tenko’s face fell, and for a moment, Himiko felt a little bad, but the next moment, Tenko bounced right into another emotion.

“Tenko should have known! She’ll never forgive that degenerate for lying to her! Degenerate males can’t be trusted Yumeno-san you should never listen to any of them ever and if any of them come near you just tell Tenko and she will use neo-aikido to destroy every last one of them!”

Tenko took a second to breath, for which Himiko was relieved. “Anyway, you can have this cake anyway, since Tenko made it for you! It’s small and cute, just like you!”

Himiko frowned, covering her chest with her arms subconsciously. “I’m not small and cute. I’m just choosing to stay in this form since it’s easier to contain my magic in a smaller vessel.”

“Ah okay! Tenko understands!” And so the neo-aikido master handed over the box to her and raced off again, still cursing men. Himiko didn’t know exactly who had told Tenko it was her birthday, but she could probably make a good guess, if she cared enough.

Well, a cake was a cake, and cakes were great for restoring mana, so she might as well eat it. She opened the box to find a small round cake with what she supposed were supposed to be cherry blossoms on it or something. It was kind of messy, but as long as it tasted good, it would probably be okay. Assuming that Tenko was any good at baking.

Himiko sighed. She felt awfully tired, all of a sudden.

 

Maybe if Miu’s classmates weren’t a bunch of fucking prudes she could actually show her inventions to them. But if she did, they would probably say some stupid stuff about how it was “inappropriate” or “in bad taste”.

Well, to hell with that! They were ugly-ass virgins who wouldn’t know a good and sexy invention if it hit them in the face.

At least she had one person who appreciated her mastery!

Keebo removed the pair of glasses from his head. “What a fantastic invention, Iruma-san. The picture quality is truly stunning.”

Miu laughed a little. “Well, duh! Of course it is, it was made by me, the gorgeous girl genius, Miu Iruma! But what did you think of the content?”

Keebo frowned a little in apparent thought. Whoever had designed him sure had taken great detail to give him realistic facial expressions, and if she ever met them, they could work together and become an unstoppable force.

“Well, I think it’s certainly the kind of thing a lot of people would enjoy. After our conversation the other day, I took the time to look up many of the things you mentioned, and I feel quite well informed on the human sex drive now.”

Well, there was one problem with his design, Miu decided. Surely, it wouldn’t hurt to add a couple more features to Keebo. Hell, she could probably even take that shitty Shota’s advice.

Her mind was already whirring with genius ideas.

 

And so April came and went.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Don't lewd the robot plz


	7. Team Building, Part 1

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter would've been really long so I decided to split it here. Unfortunately, that means most of the interesting stuff happens next chapter.  
> EDIT: Next chapter will be on Monday, I kind of want to use the whole weekend to work on it.

It was just under a month since Kaede and her classmates had begun their school lives at Hope’s Peak, and so far, everything was going fine. Well, mostly everything.

Kaede nibbled at one of Kirumi’s scones and listened to the bickering.

“There’s no way I’m going to eat that! It was in front of assassin-chan, so she probably poisoned it!”

Maki peered around Kaito to give Kokichi a cold glare. “Do you want to die.”

‘Wow, so scary! Are you going to try to kill me again!”

“Ok, enough!” Kaito placed a hand on each of their shoulders as if to physically separate them, although Maki kept her eyes fixed on Kokichi, her gaze murderous. He only smirked back in response.

“Geez, why can’t the two of you get along?” Kaito asked.

The two of them spoke at once.

“I’m not getting along with some murderous fiend.”

“I don’t care about _him._ ”

So that was a very definite “no”. Kaede sighed and turned her attention back to her meal. It would be better if all of her classmates could get along, but for all of Kaito’s mediating, it seemed impossible for Maki and Kokichi to be near each other without going at each other’s throats, in some cases literally.

Well, it was her job as class rep. to fix things like this, but there was only so much she could do, and she wasn’t personally close to either Kokichi or Maki.

But she wasn’t going to give up. It wasn’t in her nature, and if she could master playing _Islamey_ by Balakirev, then she could probably prevent her classmates from killing each other.

And now she wanted to play the piano. Well, she would have plenty of time for that in her talent room after lunch, and it would give her plenty of time to brainstorm possible solutions.

Yes, Kaede resolved, she would definitely fix this situation.

 

Shuichi lied on his back in the grass, staring up at the darkening sky. The days were getting longer and warmer, although there was still a bit of a chill in the evenings. Maki sat beside him as the two waited for Kaito.

“He’s late,” she said, and Shuichi nodded in confirmation. He still wasn’t quite sure how to talk to Maki, especially without Kaito as an intermediary, but he supposed there was time to change that. Sometime, but not tonight.

He rose up into a sitting position at the sound of two pairs of footsteps, and as Maki bristled beside him, he realized that trouble was inevitable.

Kokichi bounced along beside Kaito, who looked way more confident than Shuichi felt he should in such a situation. Before either of them could speak, Maki shot to her feet, and although Shuichi couldn’t see her face, he could tell she was not pleased.

Suddenly, he wished he had his hat. It was still in his dorm room, a proud symbol of his growing confidence, at least around his friends.

“What is he doing here?” Maki snarled. She was positioned in some sort of fighting stance, though Shuichi doubted that there would be any more physical violence between them.

Kokichi didn’t look intimidated, though. “What, am I not allowed to be with Momota-chan? Are you jealous? Or do you just hate me that much?” Crocodile tears filled Kokichi’s eyes. “Wahhhhh Momota-chan! Killer girl is being mean to me, make her stop!”

Kaito had begun to look unsure. “Hey, there’s no reason to fight now. Can’t we all just train together or something?”

The other two ignored him.

“Do you want to die?”

“Wow, is that the only thing you know how to say? I guess being a murderer really is the only thing you can do.”

“Ouma, Harukawa, cut it out!”

Shuichi very much wanted to be anywhere but here.

And it appeared as though he wasn’t alone, as Kokichi shrugged. “This is all pretty boring. Man, I thought Momota-chan would be more entertaining.” He turned around. “Well, I’m heading back. Goodbye!” He strolled off back towards the dormitory.

Maki turned so she was facing both Shuichi and Kaito, fists clenched at her sides. “I’m leaving too. I don’t really feel like training.” And with that she left, in the opposite direction of Kokichi.

For a moment, there was nothing but silence between Shuichi and Kaito. Then, Kaito plopped down on the grass next to Shuichi with a sigh.

“Well, that could’ve gone better.”

Shuichi nodded, not really sure what to say.

“Man, I’m too bummed out to train now. This whole thing has been a bust.”

“Why did you bring Ouma-kun along?” Shuichi asked, curious about the sudden change in events.

“Akamatsu asked me to, and I thought it might be a good idea. Training is a great way to bond!”

“Why did Akamatsu-san ask you to do that?”

Kaito rubbed the back of his head. “I think she wants everyone to get along better and stuff. I mean, I can’t blame her, sure would be better if we could all get along, you know?”

Shuichi did agree, but he really doubted that training was the solution to all conflicts. “What about team building exercises and stuff. That sounds like something that we could all do as a group.”

“Yeah, but do you really think that Harukawa and Ouma will want to participate? Or that they’ll actually work together?”

“…no.”

Kaito sighed again and leaned back, staring at the sky. It was almost completely dark now, and a few stars had popped up, glowing faintly.

“You know, it really sucks that Tokyo’s so bright at night. It sure would be nice to see more stars.”

Of course, Kaito was the Ultimate Astronaut, so it would make sense for him to be interested in the night sky. “Yeah.”

“Well, I guess it’s better than when we were kids, huh?”

Shuichi didn’t really remember much from his early days, only that the sky was a churning mass of purple and red, so full of pollution that only a bit of the visible light range could make it through. Although he’d been barely five by the time things started to clear up again, but maybe Kaito just remembered things better than he did.

“Yeah, I guess so.”

 

Maki couldn’t fathom why anyone would want to have a car in Tokyo. She stared out the rental car window, trying to ignore the honking of rush hour traffic. There was probably an accident somewhere, if it was this crowded.

They’d tried to leave right after class on Saturday, but by the time everything had been packed up and Kaito had managed to use his astronaut credentials and Hope’s Peak status to rent a car, it was already late afternoon.

Really, she had no clue how Kaito had actually managed to get a car, despite not even being old enough to drive. But he had insisted that he’d driven moon buggies far more complicated than a car, so it would be fine. And he was, at least, a decent driver, so as long as they didn’t get pulled over, all would be fine.

It had been Kaede’s idea, apparently, for them to make use of Golden Week to take a vacation, although they would probably be back at Hope’s Peak by the end of the day Sunday, there was only so much to do out in the mountains, after all.

Maki had been out in the countryside exactly one time, on a school trip in middle school. It had been the one time that she didn’t have any missions to take care of, and so she had been allowed to go and pretend to be a normal student for at least a couple of days. Her class had stayed in a decent hotel with a nice view out over a lake, and each morning of their three-day trip, she had woken up early to stay out the window and watch the pink and blue light rise up over the water.

It had been…nice.

Of course, this wasn’t quite the same thing, but she’d never been camping before either and that might have been a nice experience too, if it wasn’t for…

In the backseat of the car, on the other side of Kaede sat the last person Maki wanted to go anywhere with. She did her best to ignore him, pressing her head against the side of the window to give herself a little bit of space in the cramped backseat. Kokichi, at least, was playing some sort of video game on a portable console, she wasn’t sure what, she’d never played a video game before. But it meant he wasn’t talking, which was a small mercy at least.

Why did he have to come? Kaito and Shuichi she was fine with, and Kaede was okay too, even if she didn’t personally know her that well. But if she’d known that this little brat was going to be there, she would’ve locked herself in her room for the rest of the long weekend. He hadn’t even done anything yet, and she could already feel a headache coming on.

He was like the most annoying of children she’d had to babysit back at the orphanage, but smart enough to know exactly how to piss her off. A combination of everything she disliked and it hadn’t helped that he’d taken it upon himself to rat her out to the class.

She glared daggers into the side of his head. He probably had plenty of secrets of his own if he lied so much about everything, and she didn’t believe for one second that his own talent was real. So he had no right to go telling everyone that SHE was a liar.

Satisfied in her distain for Kokichi, she decided that she would simply ignore him, and try to enjoy this trip at least a bit. She wouldn’t give him the satisfaction of ruining this for her.

Finally, the roads began to clear a bit, and Kaito sighed in relief as he maneuvered the car out of the traffic jam and towards the surrounding mountains.

It was still a lengthy drive without much to do, so Maki preoccupied herself with looking out the window. Next to her, Kaede had her earbuds in and her eyes closed, apparently enjoying whatever music she was listening to. In the front seat, Shuichi had his face buried in a book and Kaito was humming a bit to himself.

“Hey, Maki Roll, don’t you have anything to do?”

Maki spluttered. What kind of nickname was that, and since when did Kaito decide it was okay to give her a nickname in the first place. “Don’t call me that.”

Kokichi, despite the fact that he was wearing headphones too, make smooching noises in Maki’s direction. That brat probably wasn’t even listening to his stupid videogame music or whatever, he was just eavesdropping. She resisted the urge to reach over Kaede and smack him.

Instead she chose to fiddle with one of her twintails. “I’m fine looking out the window.”

“Ah, okay! It is nice scenery, huh?”

Kokichi kicked at the back of Shuichi’s seat to get his attention. “Hey, Shumai, give me something to eat, I’m hungry.”

Shuichi looked over his shoulder in confusion. “Shumai? What are you—“

Before Kokichi could make fun of her and Kaito any more, Maki stepped in. “If you wanted something to eat, you should’ve brought it yourself.”

Kokichi fake cried a little, but Maki ignored him. Apparently, he had decided not to bring a backpack of any sort, despite the fact that they were going camping. She hadn’t known what to bring, so she took some bottled water and protein bars, but at least it was something.

He had at least, decided to dress practically for once, in a hoodie and pair of jeans, but he still wore that stupid checkered scarf around his neck. Well, whatever, he could do whatever he wanted, and starve for all she cared.

She turned her attention back to the window. Outside, the residential neighborhood turned to just a smattering of house, and then nothing but the ruins of old houses that nobody had bothered to demolish, and then finally nothing but the open countryside as Kaito drove the car up along increasingly run-down roads that had probably never been the first priority in the aftermath of the Tragedy.

It was, she decided, pretty relaxing, and she opened her window a little to let in the cool mountain air, it was getting a little stuffy with so many people. She had to hold onto her hair to keep it from hitting Kaede in the face, but the breeze did feel pretty nice.

As Kaito pulled from the paved road onto a dirt one, she watched the mountain trees and decided that she would do her best to enjoy this trip and to ignore the little thorn in her side.

Kaito pulled the car into a flat patch of dirt and parked it. Their trip had officially begun.


	8. Team Building, Part 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yikes, this got long! Feels like I split this part in the wrong place.
> 
> I might post on Mondays from now on, it's a lot nicer to have the entire weekend to work on a chapter, and I feel like the past chapters have suffered from lack of time.
> 
> Warnings for: Past child abuse

Kaito’s parking job might have not been entirely legal, but Maki doubted that would matter. They were far away from any signs of civilization, far from the artificial noises and colors of Tokyo. She wasn’t sure where they were, somewhere in the Okuchichibu Mountains, perhaps, but it didn’t matter much. She opened the car door and inhaled the mountain air. It had been warm in the city as summer was approaching, but up here the air was cool and a pleasant breeze brushed against her face from between the trees.

For a moment, she stood in silence. It had been a long time since she’d been anywhere besides the city, and her instincts advised her to take in all the sights and sensations. Then Kaito spoke and the spell was broken.

“Alright everyone, let’s head out!” He gestured to the surrounding forest for emphasis.

It took a bit of time to find a suitable flat patch of land for setting up camp, and although Kaito had appointed himself the unofficial leader, it became increasingly clear that he didn’t have much of an idea of what they were looking for. It was Shuichi who suggested a small clearing that was level and  clear of rocks.

They all set up the tents, or at least Maki and Shuichi set up the tents while Kaede read out the directions and Kaito offered moral support, or at least Maki thought that was what he was trying to do. Kokichi had wandered off somewhere, probably causing trouble or something. Whatever, she wasn’t his babysitter, if he wanted to go romp around the woods and hopefully get eaten by a bear then that wasn’t any of her business.

Eventually, Shuichi and she managed to build two structures that looked enough like tents to be useful. Although, Maki had only ever seen pictures of tents, so she wasn’t the best judge of what made a good tent.

“Great job, everyone!” Kaito said cheerfully, and Maki resisted the urge to roll her eyes.

At the same time, Kokichi decided to make his reappearance, struggling to drag two fairly sizable logs. Was this some sort of prank? She narrowed her eyes at him suspiciously.

“Hell yeah, Ouma! Those are great!” Kaito shouted beside her, to her surprise. “For a fire, right?”

“What, you think these are for something like that? No way, they’re for the booby trap I’m making!”

“Yeah, yeah, whatever,” Kaito said, taking one of the logs from him and laying it sideways on the ground. Maki kind of understood now, campfires were something that people made when camping, right? And they would need a place to sit.

She was about to marvel at the fact that Kokichi had done something helpful for once, but his whining over Kaito “ruining his plan” or whatever quickly crushed that feeling.

They spent the remaining daylight hours gathering rocks for a firepit in the hopes of not burning down the entire forest, and bundles of twigs and sticks to actually set on fire. By the time they had everything they needed, and after the 30 minutes it had taken Kaito to actually start a fire, the sun had almost entirely set, and the forest had gotten quite cold. It was nice to have a fire going on such a night, Maki decided.

She squeezed next to Kaito on one of the logs, which seemed mostly rotten and probably not safe, but it supported her and Kaito well enough. Opposite them sat Kaede and Shuichi, who seemed content just observing the fire, while Kokichi had apparently obtained his own personal log.

The smoke blew towards her right, in the direction of Kokichi and Kaito, and while the former coughed and gagged, the latter, to Maki’s surprise, didn’t seem to mind, as he was too busy poking the fire with a stick, trying to make it “the perfect fire”, whatever that meant.

After a while of idle chitchat that Maki payed little attention to, Kaito grabbed the backpack he’d brought and rummaged around inside it.

“Now, for the main event!” He pulled out a bag of marshmallows and a box of crackers and held them up triumphantly.

“What’s that for?” Kaede asked, leaning forward slightly to get a better look.

“Well, you see” Kaito puffed out his chest proudly, clearly ready to tell a story. “I was practicing my English for astronaut training, you know! It’s very important for astronauts to be able to communicate with each other, so—“

“Yeah, yeah, skip to the end, okay,” Kokichi said, waving his hand dismissively.

Kaito frowned in disappointment. “One of the Americans I was communicating with told me about these sandwiches you can make over a fire with marshmallows and crackers, so I figured that sounds pretty exciting!”

“I don’t think the crackers are supposed to be salty, though,” Shuichi said, studying the food in Kaito’s hands.

“Wait, really?” Kaito looked down at his supplies, and suddenly shrieked, making Shuichi nearly fall backwards.

“W-what happened?”

“They’ve melted!” Kaito waved the bag of marshmallows around for emphasis. Apparently, the heat in Tokyo had not been kind to them, and they had melted and hardened into a goopy mess. “Dammit, this sucks.”

“Yoink!” Kokichi leaned to the side and snatched the bag out of Kaito’s hands, grabbing a handfull of marshmallow mush and shoving it into his mouth. “mastes fin ta me!”

“That’s disgusting,” Kaede said with a frown. “And finish chewing before you talk!”

Kokichi grabbed another glob of marshmallows and speared it on a stick. “I said, it tastes fine to me. Since you guys don’t want them, they’re mine now.”

Kaito perked up a little bit beside her, and reached over to grab the bag back from Kokichi, who let go of it with minimal resistance. “Well, I guess it’s worth a try.”

And so at Kaito’s insistence, everyone attempted to roast marshmallow globs. Kaede, Maki, and Shuichi’s fell off their sticks within a couple of minutes, while Kaito lit his on fire and flailed around until it went out. In the end, they ate cold marshmallows and salty crackers for dinner, which wasn’t terrible, as it turned out, although Maki didn’t care much for sweet foods. Kokichi had somehow managed to create a decently cooked marshmallow, which everyone else decided to ignore.

By the time “dinner” was finished, the sky was pitch black, the fire the only source of light in the forest.

“Well, what should we do now?” Kaede asked.

Maki shrugged. She wasn’t sure how to make herself a part of this interaction, so she stayed silent and observed.

Kokichi, however, seemed as though he had been waiting for this moment. “Well, since we’re camping, this is  the perfect time to tell some good old-fashioned scary stories.”

Beside her, Kaito shifted nervously. “Umm, isn’t that a little childish.”

His voice gave him away, and Kokichi saw his chance and latched on. “Aww, what’s wrong, Momota-chan? You’re not scared, are you?” He smirked, the light from the fire casting his face in shadows that might have been spooky to someone who wasn’t Maki.

“N-no way! I’m not scared of something like this!”

Suddenly, Kokichi’s eyes went wide, and he shifted backwards, lowering his voice into a terrified whisper. “Momota-chan…don’t move, it’s behind you…momota-chan OH MY GOD IT’S TOUCHING YOU AHHHHHH!”

“EIAHHHHHHHHHHHH!” Kaito shrieked as loudly as he could and catapulted off the log, in what was apparently the direction opposite the “ghost” or whatever. He grabbed hold of Kokichi, who yelped in surprise, tripped over the log, and tumbled to the ground.

“Hey!” Kaede stood up too. “Don’t scare Momota-kun like that, or someone’s going to get hurt.”

“Owww…” Kokichi moaned. “Momota-chan, get off! You’re too heavy, I’m getting squished. He pounded on Kaito’s back with his fists. Serves him right, Maki decided, for causing such a fuss. Though it wasn’t like she cared if Kaito was scared or anything, it was just that she didn’t enjoy having to deal with such a ruckus.

“What the hell, man! You’re an asshole, you know that!” Kaito lifted himself up and brushed dirt off of his clothes, trying to salvage whatever remained of his dignity. Kokichi giggled, trying to find his way up as well.

“Neeheehee, I though you said you weren’t scared?”

“I wasn’t! Shut up!”

They were both children. Maki shook her head in exasperation.

Eventually, they ran out of firewood, and the campfire started to burn lower, going from a blaze to smoldering embers that looked pretty in the darkness. Kaede and Kokichi retreated inside their tents, but Kaito had insisted that “there were no breaks from training” and kept Shuichi and Maki outside to lie on their backs and look up at the sky after Kaito had said they would be “training their minds or whatever.”

The sky out in the forest was so different from the one in the city, filled with bright stars that could never have been seen in the city with its light pollution. Maki had never seen such a brilliant sky before.

Kaito pointed out Mars and Jupiter, which shone especially brightly, and when Maki looked over at him, she was taken aback. Kaito was always cheerful it seemed, and he wore his feelings on his sleeves. But she’d never seen him look quite like this before, and she couldn’t quite place what she was seeing. He looked…content, maybe. Or maybe mesmerized was a better word. Either way, she could tell just by looking at him that he loved the night sky. Of course, he was an astronaut, after all.

“Pretty soon, I’m gonna be up there!” he declared with confidence. “And when I’m orbiting the earth, I’ll wave down at you guys, okay!”

Maki relaxed a bit, though she wasn’t sure when she’d become tense to begin with. That was what she expected of Kaito. “That’s stupid, it’s not like we’ll be able to see you.”

“Ah, I don’t think that’s the point,” Shuichi said. “It’d be enough to know that he’s up there, right?”

“Hell yeah!” Kaito reached over to pat Shuichi on his shoulder. “That’s my sidekick for you!”

Maki listened to Kaito’s words and almost smiled, in spite of herself. Being out here, with people she could sort of trust, it was…nice.

She wasn’t used to having nice things. Anything she might have considered nice had become tainted. School trips with classmates who she had lied and deceived, playtime with the friend who was buried in grave with the family she’d never known, lunches spent with the girl whose throat Maki would slice open because she’d had the wrong type of father. Nice things weren’t a part of her life, and they never lasted long.

Suddenly, she didn’t feel so well, and so she stood up as quickly as she could. Kaito and Shuichi turned to look at her in surprise, but she wasn’t interested in saying anything else.

“I’m going to sleep,” she said tersely, and walked stiffly over to the girl’s tent.

Inside, Kaede was resting, not quite asleep she could tell, but close to it. She slid in next to her, grabbing the sleeping bag she’d brought and curling up off to the side, away from Kaede. Why couldn’t she just enjoy this trip like a normal person?

Well, she wasn’t a normal person, if she could even be called a person anymore. How could she be a person when she would kill everybody here with her were she ordered to? She would barely think twice about it.

Maybe Kokichi was right about her, as much as she hated to admit it. Maybe he just said what everyone else was thinking. What she was thinking.

Maki was well trained at pushing unwanted thoughts from her mind, and so she did so, forcing herself into a silent sleep.

 

Maki’s senses may have been sharp, a result of years of training, but despite that, she was not a light sleeper. As nightmarish as her life at the Society had been, her sleeping quarters were a place where she was safe and could finally rest after hours of training. She’d learned to sleep through the crying and screaming of the girls around her, learned to sleep through her own tears, due to her body’s desperate need to rest despite any commotion.

As a result, she was a relatively heavy sleeper, and that was why she wasn’t surprised that whatever commotion had occurred hadn’t woken her up.

Nothing seemed wrong at first, besides the fact that Kaede was not longer in the tent with her. The light steaming down on the tent told her it was already well into daylight hours, so she suspected that Kaede had simply gotten up before her.

She crawled out of the tent into the clearing. Kaede was nowhere to be found, though Maki wasn’t too worried at first. The boys’ tent flap was halfway open, and so she took a peek inside. There was one person in there, and it was the only person that Maki had no interest in interacting with. Good thing he was still asleep so she didn’t have to deal with his stupid antics.

She took a look around the campsite, searching for clues to what was going on. Most of their supplies was missing, the only thing left being Maki’s own backpack, which she had used as a pillow. It didn’t take long for her to find something unusual, though.

Tacked to a tree was a note, written in cut-out magazine letters. How childish, she thought, ripping it off the tree to read it.

_Dear Students,_

_If you want your friends back,_

_come to the bottom of the mountain._

That was all it said. Maki frowned in irritation. This was ridiculous, it couldn’t be anything but a prank.

And she knew exactly who would play such a stupid prank.

She stormed over to the boys’ tent, ripped the flap the rest of the way open, and dragged Kokichi out. She lifted him up in the air by his neck. He was still mostly asleep, or at least groggy, so she squeezed a little bit.

That, at least, woke him up.

“Wow, assassin-chan is trying to kill me again!”

What a weirdo, who would even say something like that after waking up to being strangled. Whatever, she didn’t care what went on in his stupid little brain. She shook him a little. “What did you do?”

Kokichi pulled at her hand, but he wasn’t strong enough to loosen her grip. “What do you mean?”

She shook him a little. “You know what I mean! This stupid…prank. Where are the others?”

Kokichi did look kind of confused, but she didn’t trust any facial expressions that he might make. “I don’t know anything, really! And that’s not a lie.”

Deciding she probably wouldn’t get any answers this way, she dropped him to the ground and retrieved the note from the tree. Kokichi sat on the ground, rubbing his throat, and for a moment, she wondered if she’d actually hurt him. She hadn’t squeezed that hard, she thought.

Well, she didn’t care. It was Kokichi, and he’d probably caused this entire mess to begin with.

She shoved the note in his face and waited for him to read it. For a second, Kokichi’s face looked somewhat serious, before that immediately turned into a sneaky smirk.

“You really think I did this? Come on, I don’t want to be stuck out here with you either! You’ll probably murder me and leave my body up here to get eaten by animals!”

His eyes filled with fake tears. “Waahhh, I’m gonna die! Saihara-chan, Momota-chan, help me!”

“Shut up.” She scowled at him. Though he did have a point, with all the animosity he’d shown her, she doubted he was happy with this situation either.

Kokichi immediately stopped crying, his face turning into a smirk again. “But do you know what this really is?”

“What?” She narrowed her eyes. So he did know something after all.

“It’s probably _them,_ don’t you think?”

Them. Maki knew exactly who he meant,  there could only be one group of people to be spoken of in such a way. But if that was the case…

“Wouldn’t they just kill us all? Why bother kidnapping anyone?”

Kokichi shrugged, still looking a bit too cheeky for such a situation. “Who knows. Remnants are weird like that. They’ve probably taken the others off to torture them first, and now they’re waiting for us to come and ruin their plans so they can feel despair or whatever.”

Maki puzzled it over. It wasn’t a possibility she wanted to think of, but she wasn’t sure of what a better one would be. If they did want someone to show up and thwart them, then she would probably be the best candidate, and Kokichi, for as much as she despised him, was smart enough to figure things out.

Well, they could figure that all out once they got out of here, assuming they weren’t walking right into a trap. Though if it was a trap, they should know better than to go after her.

There was only one thing to do now. If they made it back to the road, then they could find their way down pretty easily. But…

She didn’t want to ask him, but she didn’t have much of a choice. “Do you know which way we came from?”

Kokichi shrugged. How unhelpful.

“Well, if we just go downhill, we have to reach the bottom of the mountain.” Kokichi got to his feet, dusting himself off. Maki had to agree that it seemed like the best idea, better than wandering around trying to find the car and getting even more lost.

So, after she retrieved her backpack, full of the only supplies she had, she set off down the hill, Kokichi trailing along behind her.

They walked in an awkward silence for a time. The forest was pretty thick, and it was difficult not to slip in the dirt, slightly damp from its place in the shade. She wished she had brought a knife to chop through the undergrowth, but instead she had to settle with yanking it all down by hand. Kokichi, of course, did nothing to help, though she figured he would just get in the way, he didn’t look strong enough to rip down tree vines.

She took a sip from her water bottle. It was still cool up here, but as the sun rose, it did get a bit warm, especially with all the physical work she was doing.

Behind her, Kokichi slipped and fell, and in spite of herself, she turned around to check on him.

“Owww, help me up, Maki Roll.”

“Don’t call me that!” She snarled at him. It was bad enough that Kaito had given her some stupid nickname, but she wouldn’t stand for this little brat to start mocking her with it.

She set off a faster pace just to spite him.

The day progressed. She tried to catch glimpses of the sun’s position through the trees, but she couldn’t see it too well, and she’d never relied on that for her assassin work. Everything she’d done had been in the city, where there were plenty of landmarks and while if she needed to she could scale fire escapes and climb over powerlines, she wasn’t used to trekking through nature. It was, admittedly, hard work, and she emptied her water bottle way faster than she’d expected to. All of a sudden, taking 4 bottles of water seemed like a good choice.

She ran into a particularly thick vine that stretched too far to maneuver around. Groaning in irritation, she yanked and twisted it. Behind her, Kokichi must have fallen again, but she ignored him, prepared to tune out his subsequent whining. But he said nothing. Whatever, she continued to pull at the vine, finally breaking it apart. Kokichi still hadn’t made any sound, meaning he hadn’t gotten back up.

What was he doing? She turned around with a frown. Kokichi lay face down on the ground, not making any noise, which was odd for him. She walked backwards a few paces to stand by his side.

“Hey.” She nudged him with her foot, and he stirred slightly, but still didn’t get up or speak.

“Hey!” She nudged him again, harder this time, and that was enough to make him flinch away slightly. He pushed at her leg with one hand, with barely any force behind it.

Maki felt a sinking feeling in her chest, suddenly unsure if he was really messing with her. She knelt down beside him, flipping him over with one hand.

Kokichi didn’t look well, not well at all, and no matter how good a liar he was, she doubted he could fake that. His face was pale and his eyes didn’t quite seem to focus on her.

“Ouma.” Her voice sounded unusual to her, and she hesitantly placed a hand on his forehead. His head was warm, though not quite feverish, and despite all the physical activity they’d been doing, he wasn’t even a little sweaty.

She frowned, the bad feeling in her chest had grown stronger, and not just because she was certain now that Kokichi was unwell.

It only took a second to place that feeling. Leaning over a younger boy, one of the newer recruits, pressing a hand to his head and trying to drag him up. Being yelled at to keep running, you won’t get any water until you finish running and then you’ll end up like him. Leave him he’s useless if he can’t deal with even this.

She hadn’t seen him again, after that.

The air around Maki had grown warm, but she shivered anyway. Why was he so dehydrated, why hadn’t he drunk any water?”

Suddenly, she remembered that he didn’t have a backpack. She’d been the only one with water, the only one able to stay hydrated while she deliberately walked too fast for him to keep up.

Well, he could have just asked her for water! Did he really think she wouldn’t give him any, that she would let him die?

He probably did.

He probably thought her the same as the trainers who watched over her and the other children as they struggled, as some of them didn’t make it.

God, why did he have to look so young?

She rummaged around in her bag for a bottle of water and a protein bar, and dragged him across the ground until he was resting against a tree. She wasn’t completely sure what to do for him, she knew how to kill people with ease, but she’d never been tasked with…helping someone before.

She uncapped the bottle for him, placing it in his hands, afraid to pour it into his mouth in case he choked. He spilt some of it as his hands shook, but he did manage to take a drink.

For a long while, the two of them sat in silence as Kokichi took small sips of water and a few bites of the protein bar, which hopefully had salt and stuff in it. She didn’t know. He did look somewhat better, and she felt relieved, knowing he wasn’t in any immediate danger anymore. Hopefully.

For as much as she hated him, for as many times as she’d tried to choke him, she didn’t want to see him die. She didn’t want to see anyone die again, even if she was used to it. She wanted Hope’s Peak to be different, so she wouldn’t have to kill anyone else, so her situation could change.

But she hadn’t changed at all, had she? She was still the violent person she’d been when she’d entered the academy. Kokichi was right to hate her, to mark her as a dangerous person.

She wrapped her arms around her legs, feeling defeated.

 

Hours passed, but Maki didn’t think Kokichi was well enough to move, even if his face had regained most of its color, which wasn’t a lot, he’d been pretty pale to begin with. He hadn’t spoken for a long time, which was unusual enough to worry her.

So when he finally did say something, it admittedly made her jump in surprise.

“Hey, miss killer saved me! Could it be that you’ve been possessed by a more kindly spirit!”

And suddenly, she remembered why she hated him.

Maki sighed, but didn’t retaliate. “Look, I…don’t actually want to kill you.”

Kokichi cocked his head at her. “Really? But you’ve tried to strangle me twice now! You’re a murderer, are you really so surprised that I think you’ll kill me?”

She frowned. “I don’t just kill people because I feel like it, you know. Only if I’m ordered to.”

“Oh, is that supposed to make it better? Really, it’s even worse, it just means you’d kill anybody if you were asked to, right? Even your closest friends!”

Closest friends. Maki shot to her feet. “Shut up! Don’t pretend you know anything about me! Do you think I want to be like this? Do you think I chose this life? I…I didn’t have a choice!”

For a second, everything was silent. Maki breathed heavily, heart pounding. She didn’t have outbursts like this, she never had. When she was angry, she’d always turned cold and bitter. Not like this, not since she was a child.

Perhaps, it was the stress of the day. Or the fact that he’d gone a little too close to home. Whatever the reason, she didn’t care. Everything happening here would stay between them, even if Kokichi decided to blab. It wasn’t like anyone would believe him.

Kokichi, for his part was silent, face looking serious for a half second before it flickered back to his stupid smirk. “Well, whatever you say, Maki Roll.”

She hissed. He was just trying to piss her off now, and so she refused to say a word.

The two of them sat in silence until the sun went down.

 

Even if they’d gotten a ways down the mountain before needing to stop and rest, it was still cold. However, all the fire equipment was missing, and so there wasn’t much to do but wrap herself in a sleeping bag. She felt a bit bad for Kokichi, but there were some lines that had to be drawn, and sharing a sleeping bag was one of them.

Meanwhile, Kokichi was rolling a stick between his hands, drilling it into the side of another stick like he was in some sort of movie. Did he really think he could make a fire that way?

Kokichi looked over at her. “Man, you’re boring. If Iruma-chan was here, she’d at least make a shitty dirty joke. Even that would be better than miss no-fun.”

She ignored him as he continued on his pointless crusade. Or at least, she assumed it was pointless, until she caught the smell of smoke in the air. Kokichi grabbed a leaf and shoved it into the smoke until it caught fire. Maki frowned. She had assumed that such things would only work in fiction, but if anyone was ridiculous enough to manage something like this, it was Kokichi.

He used the leaf to start up the pile of stick he’d assembled, and once again, Maki hoped that the entire forest wouldn’t burn down.

I didn’t, and surprisingly, Kokichi’s fire was pretty good for a fire made from rubbing sticks. They both crowded around the warmth, Maki pointedly watching the orange glow rather than Kokichi’s triumphant smirk.

If he was waiting for her to ask how he had done that, he was going to be disappointed.

Kokichi, however, didn’t wait for anything. “Well, I guess I’m better than Maki Roll at some things.” She looked up at him, displeased with how eerie his face looked when lit only by the fire.

“But then again, in this world, there are lots of skills that people need to survive, right? I mean, the world did almost end 15 years ago.

“So, don’t think you’re special just because your life has been difficult. Most people have had difficult lives here, you know.” He smirked at her. “Well, not me, my life was basically perfect, but lots of people aren’t so lucky. But not all of them turn into nasty murderers, you know.”

Maki stared at him and he stared back, although he wasn’t looking at her, not really. His expression was all too familiar to her. It was the kind of expression she saw on the faces of the children around her, the expression she saw so often when she looked in the mirror. The face of kids who had seen too much when they were far too young, the face of kids already weary of the world.

She looked away, and when she raised her head again, Kokichi’s face was back to normal.

He continued talking. “Your form says you’re not an assassin anymore, that you’re employed by Hope’s Peak now. Because, it’s not a great idea to train killers, everyone knows how well that turned out.”

“Well, if you know that, then why—“

“Because you’re still an assassin. And if things didn’t work out here with Hope’s Peak, if you went back to killing, you would murder all of us without a second thought if you were ordered to, right? Even Momota-chan!”

He was right, she knew. Too right for her to be comfortable.

“And what about you? You’re always insisting you’re an evil leader or whatever, so can you really say you’ve never killed someone?”

Kokichi didn’t miss a beat. “Nope! I’m a perfect pacifist! I’d cry even if I squished a bug!”

Maki vaguely remembered watching Gonta chase Kokichi around the school trying to show off his silkworm collection at one point, and highly doubted that last bit.

“But can you say you’d never kill someone, no matter the circumstances?”

“Nope!”

A face flashed into her mind. “Not even for one of your friends? Or,” She though about his talent. “What about one of your so-called subordinates?”

Kokichi looked serious again for a moment, then he leaned backwards until she couldn’t see his face in the darkness. It was a moment before he spoke again.

“Silly Maki Roll, I don’t have any friends, you know! And my subordinates are just pawns to me. I don’t care about anyone!”

Maki frowned. Even she wouldn’t admit such a lack of empathy so easily. “What about Momota? I thought he was your friend?”

Kokichi scoffed. “Momota-chan isn’t really my friend. He’s just pretending to get along with me so he can say he’s a hero or whatever. It’s not like he actually cares about me personally.”

“Well, maybe if you weren’t always so nasty, he would actually care about you.”

“Maybe, but I’m not going to change just so Momota-chan can feel like he’s accomplished something. Sooner or later, he’ll give up and go bother someone else. Like Hoshi-chan, maybe.

“But we’ve gotten off topic, haven’t we? Maybe I would kill someone, if they were super annoying.”

He leaned back towards her, his face looking more disturbing than ever. “But if I did, I wouldn’t be acting so high and mighty, like I was a good person, you know?”

Maki frowned. His words didn’t make sense to her. “I don’t act high and mighty. I know what I am.”

“But it doesn’t matter if you don’t try to change. If you want to be all buddy-buddy with Momota-chan and Saihara-chan, then you should actually prove you’re a good person, you know. Give up killing entirely, make a vow or something, whatever works.”

Her frown grew. This was all so…weird, because even if Kokichi was being his usual flippant self, she couldn’t help but feel like he was dead serious.

Well, if it would get him off her back. “I guess I can do that. Give up killing.”

It wasn’t such a bad thing to decide, but it wasn’t exactly the kind of resolution she wanted to make out in the woods with this little brat.

“Great! Now we can be best friends!”

“…what?”

“Relax, that was a lie.” Kokichi lean backwards again. “Well, I’m going to sleep. Goodnight, Harukawa-chan!”

“Shush,” she said in response.

 

Her first though upon waking up was that everything that had happened the night before had been a dream. It was just too surreal, thinking about having a heart-to-heart with Kokichi of all people. She wouldn’t have a heart-to-heart with anyone to begin with, let alone her least favorite person.

Well, maybe he wasn’t that bad. He was a brat, for sure, but tolerable if she tuned out his more annoying crap.

Speaking of said brat, he was already awake and eating another one of her protein bars. “Wow, Harukawa-chan sure is a deep sleeper. Even though I put charcoal all over your face, you didn’t wake up.”

“What?” She rubbed at her face, but her hand came back clean. “Very funny.”

Pushing their conversation or whatever that was to the back of her mind, they continued the rest of the way down the mountain.

 

As it turned out, they had stopped not that far from the bottom, as Maki pushed her way out of the trees and jumped the low barrier onto the torn up road below, Kokichi following along in much better health than before. For a moment, nothing happened. And then she heard the sound of a car engine to her left.

She spun around, taking a fighting stance, ready to fight whomever she needed to. Behind her, Kokichi was laughing like this was some sort of funny situation.

The car, however, was one she recognized. It was the rental car that they’d ridden in. And in the front seat was…

“Momota!”

Kaito hopped out of the car and ran over to the two of them, Shuichi and Kaede following behind.

Maki looked around, unsure of the situation. “What…is this?”

Kokichi hopped up next to her. “Neeheehee, I can’t believe you haven’t figured it out. I guess brains aren’t your strong suit.”

Maki groaned, but said nothing.

“But it’s pretty obvious that these guys were the ones who left the note. Because they probably got tired of our fighting. Am I right, Momota-chan?”

Kaito gave him a thumbs up. “Yep!”

She could only stare silently. “What, is that really…why?”

Kaede caught up with the rest of them, looking a bit sheepish. “I’m sorry, I just thought this might be a good chance for you two to stop fighting before someone got hurt. So I asked Amami-kun for help, and he said that roughing it in the wilderness is a great way to bond, so I thought maybe…” She trailed off.

“Before someone got hurt? You guys are so cruel, Harukawa-chan almost got me killed! And that’s not even a lie!”

“Wait, really?” Kaede looked pale. “But…I asked Iruma-san to keep an eye on you two with her drone, and she said everything was fine…”

“Why would you ask that bitch, she’s stupid!”

“Don’t call her that!”

Maki listened to the two squabble, but there was still a question she wanted answered. “Ouma, if you knew that this was a trick this whole time, why didn’t you say something? Why did you lie?”

Kokichi turned to her, smirking. “Well, lying is kind of my thing. Also, I was getting kind of bored of fighting with  Harukawa-chan, so I decided to play along.”

So she was the only one who didn’t know.

“You’re such a brat, you know?”

“Yep!”

The ride back home was just a bit less tense than the ride there.


	9. A Better Day

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sorry I didn't get this up yesterday! I was busy, and by that, I mean I got distracted working on a sprite video [(Shameless plug)](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wN8XRasWFQM)
> 
> Upload schedule may be a bit wonky for a while.

It took most of the ride back to Tokyo for Kaede’s excitement over having improved the relationship between Maki and Kokichi to wear off, and with it came with the crushing realization that she had made a terrible mistake.

She snuck glances at Kokichi from the corner of her eye. He was resting against the window of the car, pretending to sleep, since Kaede was pretty sure that sleeping people didn’t say the word “snore” out loud repeatedly. He looked okay, at least, but her gut still churned with worry. Maki had been able to confirm that Kokichi had passed out for a minute or so, which Kaede was certain wasn’t a good thing, the only time people could walk that off was in the movies.

She didn’t waste much time taking off back to her room once they return, needing at least some time to herself.

She took a moment to sit still on her bed and take a few breaths. She did need to know what had happened, if nothing else, so she checked the Hope’s Peak registry for Miu’s cell number and dialed it.

The phone only rang once before Miu answered.

“Who the fuck is this?”

Typical.

“It’s Akamatsu, I ne—“

“The fuck do you want, penis girl, I’m sleeping right now!”

“Don’t call me that!” Kaede snapped. “And you can’t be sleeping if you’re talking to me.”

“I-it’s just a j-joke, don’t get so mad about it,” Miu said in a timid voice, though she quickly perked back up. “Though it’s too bad you forgot you’re talking to Miu Iruma, gorgeous girl genius. No way in hell am I gonna waste hours of my precious time sleeping.”

Between her worries and this conversation, Kaede could definitely feel a headache coming on. She rubbed her temple and sighed. “Look, I need to know what happened with the drone footage, you said you’d tell me if anything bad happened.”

“The what?”

“The drone! The one watching Harukawa and Ouma!” She was beginning to think she’d made a horrible mistake getting Miu involved in this at all.

“Oh, that! Well, I just set it up to beep if someone died and left it alone. No way am I gonna watch Shota and Harucunt have a fuck party in the woods or whatever.”

Kaede hung up her phone before she said something she’d regret.

She lay back down on her bed and sighed again. It would be easy to blame Miu for everything, but she knew that wouldn’t be fair, not when she’d been the one to rope Miu in to begin with. No, this was her responsibility as the class rep, and if she couldn’t even keep her classmates safe, then was she really qualified for her position.

Even if it had turned out okay, her head still swarmed with all the ways things could have gone wrong. What if Maki hadn’t been able to help Kokichi, or had left him behind? Or if the two of them had gotten hurt, there were probably all sorts of wild animals and any manner of things to trip over or fall off of. And she wouldn’t have been able to do anything to help, even with the drone footage, not at the bottom of the mountain.

She stared up at the light above her bed until her vision turned spotty. What a failure of a class rep she was, she hadn’t managed to keep anyone safe.

Kaede was jolted out of her slump by the sound of a knock on her door. She made her way over and opened it.

Shuichi stood on the other side, a serious look on his face. “Ah, Akamatsu-san, sorry for bothering you, but you ran off so quickly before that I was worried. Is everything okay?”

Kaede smiled softly. She was tempted to brush it off and tell him that everything was okay, but he’d been willing to open up to her before, so the least she could do was return the favor. “I…don’t know, I mean, I feel like I made a mistake, you know? Because Ouma-kun could’ve gotten really hurt, and that’s my fault, I shouldn’t have…”

“Hmm…” Shuichi mumbled. “Maybe it’s true that it…wasn’t the best plan.” He looked up at her, offering a small smile as well. “But I don’t think you should blame yourself so much, we all went along with this plan, so we all share responsibility.”

“That’s true, but,” Kaede said hesitantly. Shuichi was trying his best to encourage her, but she couldn’t help but feel guiltier over it, not when he had been the one with the most misgivings about their plan to begin with.

“And things worked out okay, so don’t worry too much over what might have happened. You can just remember and do better for next time, okay?”

“Okay.”

They spent a moment in silence, standing in the doorway.

“But, I still want to help my classmates get closer, you know? Tomorrow’s another holiday, so I thought…” She wasn’t sure, could she still do such a thing after today.

“I think that’s okay.” Shuichi reassured her. “Just…no tricks this time, how about that?”

Kaede nodded, able to feel at least a little better. There were plenty of ways for her classmates to get closer to each other that didn’t involve such a convoluted plan. But it wouldn’t hurt to ask for Shuichi’s advice.

“So, here’s what I was thinking, for tomorrow, I mean…”

 

The walk from the nearest subway station to Dome City was probably less than five minutes, but it was still way too far for Himiko, especially with the heat of midday Tokyo beating down on the three of them. She let her arms swing from side to side, slouching over as she walked along. What a pain, it would be better if they could just teleport right there, but she wasn’t a high enough level to use teleport spells yet.

“Nyeh, how much further?”

She immediately regretted speaking when Tenko wheeled around to face her. “Are you tired, Yumeno-san! If you are, Tenko can carry you! And you can rest your head on my shoulder too, if you want!”

Himiko frowned. “Stop it, that’s weird.” Tenko’s face fell, and she turned around again. Well, it would be better if she didn’t say weird stuff like that, Himiko didn’t know what to do with such things.

“Nyahaha, Atua says no fighting!” Angie spun around as well, still walking backwards ahead of Tenko and Himiko. “Everyone should get along, okay, okay?”

“We’re not fighting, right Yumeno-san?” Tenko asked in a too-loud voice, slowing down a bit so that Himiko could catch up. How did they both have so much energy in the mornings like this? Himiko could only have such energy with the help of magic elixirs. Though those were hard to find, so she had to use gross coffee instead.

“Okay,” she said in response. They were supposed to “get along and have a fun day out”, as Kaede had said when she’d handed the three of them day passes for the amusement park. Himiko supposed that it could be fun, but it was also tiring, she’d rather do something that didn’t involve walking around all day.

As the three of them got closer to the park, Himiko began to realize the problem that came with attending an amusement park during Golden Week. The entrance to Dome City was packed with families waiting to get in and tourists speaking languages she didn’t understand.

Tenko reached out towards her. “Take Tenko’s hand, Yumeno-san! Or you might get lost! Don’t worry, Tenko will protect you from any degenerate males.” She snuck glares at the men nearest to Himiko for good measure.

It sounded annoying, but Himiko didn’t really feel like getting lost or trampled, so she took Tenko’s hand as well. Angie grabbed her other hand in response, still skipping along.

“How exciting!” She chirped, swinging her body back and forth. “Hey, hey, where should we go first? Angie wonders?”

“Where does Yumeno-san want to go first?” Asked Tenko. Himiko didn’t feel like deciding though, that was too much work, and Angie was the one with the dome map anyway.

“Oooh, Atua wants to ride the ferris wheel!” Angie pointed at the ride in question, stretching high into the sky.

“Is your god really going to pick amusement park rides for us?” Tenko said with a pout, though Angie seemed unfazed by Tenko’s doubt.

“Yes, Atua loves to ride rides with Angie!”

“It’s fine,” Himiko muttered before an argument could start. “Ferris wheel sounds fine.”

It took a lot of slowly pushing their way through the crowds and a lot of Tenko threatening to neo-aikido any man that got in their way, to finally reach the absurdly long line for the ferris wheel.

Angie and Tenko had plenty to say, but not to each other, and so their wait in line was relatively quiet, though with all the noise surrounding them, Himiko doubted they could carry out a conversation even if they wanted to.

It took nearly 20 minutes to make it onto the ride, and the three of them hurried into their gondola, eager to be out of the crowd.

It was, admittedly, a nice ride, though. Angie pressed her nose to the window to look over the park below.

“Ooooh, Atua can feel lots of inspiration! For great paintings, uh huh!”

“Tenko wishes we’d gotten a gondola with karaoke,” Tenko said in disappointment. “I wanna hear Yumeno-san sing.”

Himiko frowned again sinking back in the gondola seat. “I said to stop it.”

Tenko looked genuinely confused this time, though. “Oh, Tenko just wants…to see Yumeno-san perform.”

Oh, okay. Well at least it wasn’t anything weird this time. “But I’m a mage, not a singer.”

“T-tenko knows, she just thought…that Yumeno-san would be good at performing in general, maybe?”

Tenko sounded unsure and a bit bashful, which was new to Himiko. She was always a bundle of energy ready to overwhelm Himiko, but for the first time, Himiko wondered if maybe she really did just want to see Himiko perform.

Himiko stood up from her seat shakily, before immediately deciding to sit back down when the gondola rocked slightly. The movement attracted the attention of both Tenko and Angie, though, and they fixed their eyes on her in surprise.

Himiko took a breath and said in a monotone. “Behold, the amazing Himiko’s powerful in-the-sky magic!”

Tenko’s eyes lit up and Angie watched with her perpetual smile.

Actually, Himiko’s in-the-sky magic was just the same as her on-the-ground magic, but Tenko didn’t seem to mind, as she squealed in surprise as Himiko pulled out her chosen card from behind her ear and produced fully blown balloons from her hat. Though ultimately, the magic show needed to be put on hold after Himiko released a number of pigeons into the gondola, which turned out to be a mistake.

Lots of squawking and feathers later, Himiko finally regained enough mp to magic the pigeons back into her hat and decided that maybe it was time to stop the act lest they get kicked out of the park.

She took a little bow, still remaining seated, and Tenko furiously applauded while Angie cheered.

“Nyeh, thank you, Ladies and Ladies, for attending this magic show.”

 

They returned to solid ground and the crowds of the amusement park. It was Angie who picked the next ride as well, a roller coaster. The three of them got in line for the ride, and when Himiko glanced over at Tenko, she notices that she looked a little bit pale.

“Nyeh, Chabashira-san got hit with a curse.”

Tenko turned to look at her. “Don’t worry Yumeno-san, T-tenko will protect you from any scary rides!”

Himiko cocked her head. “Could it be that you’re scar—“

“No no no, Tenko’s fine, Tenko’s not scared of anything!” She took hold of Himiko’s hand and squeezed. “Don’t be afraid, I’ll be here to comfort you.

The coaster was two to a seat, and Tenko refused to be separated from Himiko, so Angie was left to sit in front of them next to a stranger. Tenko was shaking rapidly next to Himiko, which was a little distracting when she was still holding Himiko’s hand.

They got buckled in, and Himiko was forced to remove her hat to her displeasure, and the ride began.

Himiko wasn’t really scared or coasters or anything, as a mage she had to do lots of dizzying magic, so she was completely prepared, and she could tell that Angie was the same way, already waving her arms in the air in excitement before they even left the station. Tenko, on the other hand had her eyes squeezed shut beside her, still clasping Himiko’s hand in her own.

When they got to the top of the first hill, Tenko gave up any illusions of bravery and  leaned over to wrap her arms around Himiko’s body.

“Nyeh, wait—“

And they rushed down the hill, Tenko shrieking the whole way.

 

“Nyahaha, Atua says he wants to go again!”

Tenko swayed from side to side as she followed behind Angie, but she didn’t say anything in response to the other girl’s suggestion, though Himiko couldn’t fathom why. She clearly didn’t want to ride again, judging by her first reaction.

Well, Himiko wasn’t heartless, so she might as well help Tenko out. “I don’t feel like going again, the long line is a pain.”

Tenko looked back at her as if she’d just pulled the girl from the ocean before she drowned.

They ended up riding a slower paced ride through a fake forest occupied mainly by young children, though they had to move the train cart themselves, and Tenko was the only one who was willing or able to do that. Himiko was perfectly willing to sit back and let Tenko show off though and enjoy the pleasant yet fake scenery.

The lengthy lines meant it was past noon by that time and the three girls were more than ready for lunch. They got hot dogs and lemonades from a stand and sat down to eat. Angie had purchased three hot dogs and a large lemonade, to Himiko’s surprise given the other girl’s size, while Tenko and Himiko both settled with one each. It was pretty good, although Himiko liked sweet foods better. The moment she’d mentioned that, Tenko promised to buy her a crepe for dessert.

They all ended up getting crepes, Himiko and Angie both ordering ones stuffed with ice cream and whipped toppings, while Tenko got a lighter one.

“I have to maintain my abs!” She insisted, bouncing around for emphasis.

They found a seat in the shade to enjoy their food. It was even more crowded now that it was midday, and even hotter. Well, at least the ice cream was nice and cold Himiko thought as she licked at it.

Watching the crowds go by, she took a minute to think about their day. It had been…nice, she decided. Even if Angie and Tenko could be a little hard to deal with, she decided that going with them was fun, more fun than if she’d gone on her own, if nothing else.

Tenko finished her food first and stood up to stretch, though Himiko was happy to remain sitting for a moment longer while they waited for Angie to finish.

“Nyahaha!” She chirped through her food. “Atua says you should savor all the food He gives you!”

“I don’t think that he made this food, though,” Tenko replied, though she didn’t seem too annoyed with the other girl, at least.

“Nyeh, I’m getting tired,” Himiko said, and it was true. For as nice a time as they’d had, her legs were all worn out now and it was hot.

Angie finished the last of her crepe. “Okay, okay. One more ride though, okay!”

Himiko and Tenko agreed, and so they finished up their day with a water ride, wearing ponchos so they didn’t get too wet, they still had to ride the train home after all. Tenko gripped Himiko’s hand tightly during the drop and gave her a hug at the bottom while Himiko shook water out of her hat, as she hadn’t saved up enough mana for a drying spell.

The train back to Hope’s Peak was packed, though it was mercifully short. To Himiko’s displeasure, there were no seats open and she was too short to reach the handrail, so she settled with gripping Angie’s smock and holding on.

Tenko squeezed in behind her. “Don’t worry, Yumeno-san, you can hold onto Tenko if you want!”

Himiko frowned over her shoulder. She had hoped that they were past this, at least. “Stop doing that, it’s weird.” She shifted uncomfortably.

To her surprise, Tenko seemed to get the message, and she looked down sheepishly. “T-tenko’s sorry, she didn’t mean to…sorry Yumeno-san, Tenko just wanted…”

 _Just wanted to be your friend._ It was left unsaid.

Himiko turned back around. “Nyeh, okay. I forgive you.”

Behind her, Tenko lit up! “Okay! Tenko will do better from now on! And she’ll make sure to protect Yumeno-san from any degenerate males who come near her!” She held out her arms behind Himiko as if to demonstrate.

Some things wouldn’t change, Himiko supposed.

The miserably cramped train ride ended at last as the train pulled up to the station. Angie was the closest to the door and so she made her way towards it at a brisk pace, Himiko following close behind and Tenko fighting along behind them.

The doors opened.

Angie stepped off with a skip.

Himiko placed one foot on the station floor.

Then the other.

Behind her, the world shattered.


	10. An Ordinary Day

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Oh boy this ones a doozy...  
> I'm kinda nervous on how well it fits into the rest of the story as well as the real life connotations, but with that cliffhanger, I can't do anything about it now. I guess you can decide for yourself if it's appropriate or not.
> 
> Warnings for: mild graphic imagery, nothing worse than what you'd see in the series itself though.

Kaede’s parents had often spoken about and bemoaned the state of the world back when she was a child. She couldn’t really understand though, the concept that to them, her world was a foreign and dangerous one. Her earliest memories were of when she was six, just under three years after the Tragedy, when the world was still blanketed in a layer of thick smog and her parents rode around in armored vehicles with air filtration and she never spent more than a few minutes outside at a time for fear of the harm her lungs might suffer.

Those early memories mostly took place within the future foundation daycare center, a well-maintained building kept separate and safe from the outside. The windows were made of reinforced glass and they’d been painted over with images of sheep and trees to cover up the sight of burning buildings and red sky in the distance. She had never felt like she was in danger while she was there and it had been easy for her, as a young child, to forget that there was anything wrong with the world at all, tapping away on a child’s xylophone and then a plastic piano for hours on end until her parents came to get her, only allowed in by virtue of their future foundation keycards and the high-tech voice recognition system.

Until one day, her mother came to get her before the end of the day, which was strange because she always had a lot of work at the foundation to do. She was in tears and had taken Kaede’s hand and rushed her down the stairs and out of the building into the waiting armored car, surrounded by armed guards who sat on either side of her during the car ride home.

Her father was at their house too, surrounded by guards as well as numerous suitcases stuffed full of their possessions.

Her parents hadn’t told her much at the time, except that they had to leave their house because it wasn’t safe to stay there, and so their moved into an apartment closer to the center of the future foundation district, where it was safer.

She’d only learned what had happened several years later, when her mother had sat her down and explained to her about the bomb in the mail that had been sent to their address. It had gone off early, in the face of the mailman who Kaede barely knew but who she remembered waving to sometimes when she got home from daycare and who had once given her a lollypop, though her parents had forbidden her from eating it.

After that, it was harder to distance herself from the reality of the world or from the fact that such a world was abnormal, especially as the future foundation gained more and more ground and made more and more efforts to revitalize Tokyo until her parents could say it resembled the city they’d known before the Tragedy.

The only other incident that had happened to them was the vandalism of the front of their apartment by a solitary remnant who was quickly apprehended and so there was no reason to move again. Such things weren’t unusual, Kaede knew, among future foundation workers, and even with the threats, she could count herself lucky for the opportunities she’d had to pursue her musical talent and dreams from a young age.

And with the world having returned to something her parents could call normal, it grew easier and easier to forget that anything was wrong, that there were any dangers to be afraid of. Her parents had helped her tailor her uniform for Hope’s Peak and they’d told her time and time again that she had to be careful, that as a Hope’s Peak student and a future foundation child, she was a target. It should have scared her, and yet it hadn’t, not when it was the life and the world she’d always known.

And in the safety of Hope’s Peak academy, it was even easier to forget the world, easy to enjoy good times with her classmates and be what her parents had called “ordinary”.

It was so easy to forget, and that was why she felt as though she’d been punched in the stomach the minute Shuichi pounded on her dorm room door and called her out into the hall among the frantic chattering of the other students, who had gathered in the lounge around the TV, tuned into the news, watched as other students rang up their friends and family, some in tears, and she quickly dialed three numbers herself and nearly cried when they all went to voicemail.

It was too, too easy to grow complacent.

 

The human brain could only process information so fast.

Himiko knew this, she had to know it, because even though she was a mage, she still sometimes needed to use her tricks when she was out of mana. So she knew all about how much time it would take for her audience to see and process her actions and sleights of hand and it was up to her to beat that time and fool their eyes and minds.

That idea of processing information seemed important at that time to her, because one second she was standing on the platform, surrounded by crowds of people and the next she was on her side, in a different spot on the platform and the sounds of chatter were gone.

Over the intercom, the calm, mechanical voice was speaking its usual announcement, which Himiko could barely make out over the ringing in her ears. “…watch your bags as you exit the train.” Followed by the cheerful, now out of place jingle.

She tried to breathe in, but choked as the air around her burned her throat and lungs, and that was what brought her back to her senses. She jolted upwards, hauling her body from the pavement, not sure if she was somehow uninjured or just running on adrenaline.

The sleek silver train behind her was gone. No, that wasn’t it, it was smashed against the barrier wall, bent as though some giant had crushed it in its massive hands. The front of the car, the one she’d just come out of, was smoking, the edges of the door frames tinted black as they burned.

She couldn’t see the car in front of that one, not with the smoke choking the air, but she could see the bright light of orange flames from somewhere in the haze.

The ringing in her ears began to fade and she could hear the sounds of screaming and chaos. Then, she felt someone grab her arm and pull.

Angie’s voice was just as unnatural as the jingle. “Himiko, Himiko, let’s go, okay.”

Himiko moved on instinct, turning to follow Angie and join the people making their way out of the station, herded along by a security guard. Then, her mind caught up with her feet and she froze, looking around in desperation.

“Where’s Chabashira-san?” she asked, voice begging Angie for the answer she needed to hear.

“Hmmm…Angie’s not sure.”

No. No no no no. Himiko wrenched herself out of Angie’s grip and took a couple of steps back towards the trains, ignoring the burning in her eyes and throat.

“Cha-chabashira-san? Chabashira-san! Tenko! Tenko, where are you!”

She had been right behind them, hadn’t she? She couldn’t still be on the train, she couldn’t be trapped and she definitely couldn’t be…

Angie pulled her away, and she wasn’t strong enough to resist as the other girl dragged her up the station stairs and to the street above.

Outside, the air was clear and the sun was bright, and yet it was impossible to forget that something was wrong. Police cars were forming a blockade around the street and the train passengers who had left with Himiko and Angie looked around, either confused or panicked. Beside Himiko, one woman had a hand pressed over her eye, blood dripping down her face, and Himiko couldn’t help but feel sick.

The world went by in a blur. Fire engines pulled up in front of the station and ambulances arrived to cart away the injured to the hospital. Those with lesser injuries or those who were waiting on someone, like Himiko and Angie, took seats on the tarps set up by the police. Himiko’s mind swirled with chaos as she looked around. Some people were crying, others sat still and silent. Beyond the police barricade, reporters and curious passerby swarmed, people looking for loved ones called into the crowd of passengers.

Angie had to relay the information to her, as she couldn’t make out any announcements through the noise. There had been a bomb, or at least the authorities suspected there had been one. Nobody needed to ask why or who would do such a thing, everybody already knew. During golden week, at the station nearest to Hope’s Peak academy, there wasn’t a chance it was a coincidence.

The smoke spewing from the underground died down quickly, though Himiko suspected that it was only in part due to the firefighters. She’d worked with fire before, and if it had incinerated the seat cushions and…everything else…it would quickly run out of things to burn.

She hoped against all odds that the fire hadn’t reached their car.

As if reading her mind, Angie tapped on her shoulder. “Hey, hey, Atua says that Tenko is definitely okay! But if we pray to Him, she’ll be extra okay!”

Angie smiled so much that Himiko had always assumed that she would keep smiling even in the middle of a tragedy. It turned out she was right, but instead of being creepy as she’d expected, it made her feel a little bit calmer. Like maybe things would be alright.

“…ok.”

She followed Angie’s lead and clasped her hands together. She wasn’t sure if she believed in Angie’s god or anything, but it made her feel more at ease, if only by a tiny bit. In her bag, her phone buzzed but she ignored it, content to remain in silence for a little bit longer.

She stopped when the paramedics began to bring out the people inside. Some of them seemed alright, if shaken, but were able to walk just fine, while others were brought out on stretchers, the white blankets covering most of their bodies stained In red. Himiko didn’t want to look, didn’t want to see so many people covered in blood or burns, but she kept searching for a yellow bandanna and dark twintails. What had Tenko been wearing? She didn’t remember.

Tenko wasn’t among the people walking out, to her dismay and terror, and so she turned her attention to the stretchers, begging Atua or whatever other god might be out there for Tenko to be okay.

Because, she was a dear friend.

Finally, she spotted Tenko’s telltale hairstyle, dangling down from one of the stretchers, and she leapt up from the tarp, heart in her throat. She raced over to her as fast as she could, all of her energy returning at once.

Tenko was awake, and most importantly, alive, although her face was pale and blood was blossoming from beneath the cloth around her shoulder.

Her glazed eyes met Himiko’s panicked ones and her lower lip trembled, as if she were trying not to cry.

“Y-yumeno-san…”

One of the paramedics, wearing a safety mask over his face, turned to Himiko and Angie behind her. “Are you friends or family?”

“Friends,” Himiko said, keeping her eyes on her friend, who flashed her a tiny, thin smile.

“Yumeno-san, Tenko will…protect you, okay?”

Himiko nodded, and suddenly Tenko’s face grew blurry. She wiped away her tears quickly. Now wasn’t the time to cry, not when she needed to be strong for Tenko.

There weren’t enough ambulances for all of the injured, and so Tenko was brought to an onsite medical tent. Himiko guessed that was probably a good thing, as it meant that her injuries weren’t as serious as those who’d been rushed off in ambulances right away or airlifted via helicopter. She stayed by her friend’s side as the paramedics began to treat Tenko.

They pulled the cloth away, and Himiko could see the shrapnel buried in Tenko’s left shoulder, blood seeping out from around it. Tenko didn’t appear to want to see her injury either, as she turned away, lips trembling again, and she reached out her right hand towards Himiko, and suddenly, Himiko was reminded of Tenko’s fear and courage as they’d sped down roller coaster hills and she wanted to cry again. Where had everything gone wrong? Why did this have to happen?

She gripped Tenko’s hand in her own.

The paramedics had all sorts of fancy equipment that Himiko couldn’t name, but they seemed to know what they were doing and they didn’t ask for the two girls to leave, so Himiko instead focused on her friend’s face. The paramedics gave her some sort of anesthetic, for which Himiko was glad, because she didn’t want Tenko to have to be in any pain.

Tenko didn’t fall asleep or anything, and so Himiko held her hand while the medics worked.

“Yumeno-san can heal Tenko with her magic, right?”

“I’ll try, but my mana is really low. But, I’ll use my magic to make you feel better.”

“Nyahaha, if you pray to Atua, He’ll definitely help you!”

It felt normal, too normal for such a situation, and Himiko’s eyes watered again. Before she could wipe them away, Tenko squeezed her hand harder.

“It’s okay for you to cry if you want, Yumeno-san.”

And so Himiko did, letting the tears flow down her face as her body shook with sobs. She wiped at her eyes and nose with her other hand, well aware that she was making a mess everywhere. And  even though Tenko was hurt, she was the one to gently rub Himiko’s hand in her own even as tears rolled down her own face.

Finally, one of the paramedics tapped Himiko on the shoulder. “We’re done here, but you should go to a hospital for a more thorough examination anyway. Do you have a way to get there?”

Himiko pulled her phone out of her pocket, hoping to call one of her friends. Kaito was able to drive, she was pretty sure. She had five missed calls from Kaede and three from Shuichi, as well as 13 texts from the former.

_Hey Yumeno-san, can you please answer my calls?_

_Yumeno-san, are you okay? Please let me know._

_Did you get this? Please text me back?_

_Are Angie and Chasbashira-san okay?_

_Let me know as soon as possible._

And so on. Himiko shot back a text.

_> its okay. chabashira-san is hurt can kaito come drive us to hospital please outside kasuga station thanks_

It only took Kaede a second to respond.

_I’m on it! Kaito will be there in a couple minutes. Roads are crowded._

And then.

_Is it bad?_

_> dont think so_

That seemed to satisfy Kaede, and so Himiko went back to focusing on her friend as Angie answered her own messages.

 

The streets were incredibly crowded, especially those to any nearby hospitals, so Kaito took them to a less crowded hospital over in Chiyoda. Tenko and Himiko sat in the backseat together, Tenko’s shoulder and arm wrapped in a thick layer of bandages, but she seemed okay and in high enough spirits, and for that, Himiko was thankful. Tenko was safe. She would be okay. It would be okay.

She tapped her feet against the seat in front of her. “Nyeh, Chabashira-san?”

“What is it?”

“Would it be okay if I called you Tenko?”

Tenko’s screech of joy was enough to make Kaito hit the horn in surprise.


	11. Silent Times

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A slower chapter for today, it's been a really busy week. :/  
> Edit 04/02, no chapter this week, next one will be up on the 10th

Fortunately, the doctor who came to examine Tenko’s wound is female. Unfortunately, the one looking over Himiko was not.

Himiko had to practically restrain her from neo-aikido-ing the doctor the minute he tried to lay his degenerate male hands on the smaller girl, and she’d only relented after Himiko insisted that it would be okay. Even so, she made sure to keep her glare fixed on the doctor during the whole examination. Filthy degenerates should never be allowed to become doctors, only females!

Himiko and Angie apparently had to be examined for “primary injuries” or something, and Tenko didn’t know what that meant, but it sounded bad. She had insisted upon staying by their sides, and so she sat in the examination room with them while waiting for the results of her x-rays.

The examination looked like any other doctor’s appointment with stethoscopes and that ear scope thing that Tenko didn’t know the name of. Her specialty was martial arts, not medicine, so all she could do was wait in anticipation, hoping Himiko would turn out to be alright.

Finally, the doctor deemed both Himiko and Angie to be fine, and if he weren’t a degenerate male, Tenko might have hugged him. Instead, she bounced over to her friend, ignoring the pain in her shoulder.

“Himiko, Himiko! Tenko can call you Himiko right? Tenko’s so glad you’re okay!”

Himiko swung her legs back and forth lazily. “Nyeh, that’s fine.” Tenko had to keep herself from squealing again.

In spite of herself, she couldn’t help but feel a bit guilty. Such a horrible thing had happened and so many people had been injured way worse than her, and yet here she was, taking advantage of the situation to grow closer to Himiko. She dispelled such thoughts as quickly as possible. It wasn’t like her to be so negative! There was no harm in finding the good in a terrible situation.

The results of her x-rays came back, and even though she couldn’t understand the medical jargon, apparently she’d been lucky, and the shrapnel hadn’t severed any tendons in her shoulder. All that was left was for the wound to be sutured up, and Tenko had to turn her head away and grip Himiko’s hand tightly while Angie said a prayer or something. She didn’t want to look at her wound any more than she had to.

 

The dust was thick, and Tenko choked, eyes watering as she gasped for air. Her back was pressed against something warm and uncomfortable, and she shifted her body slightly, aware that she had gone from standing to sitting in an instant.

What was happening?

She couldn’t hear anything for a minute as her ears rang and her head swam, until the sound of screaming filled her eardrums and she winced. Her feet scrambled for purchase on the floor of the train car, which was for some reason slanted downwards now, and she was sure it wasn’t supposed to be that way. She pressed her arms into the thing behind her in order to stand up, and her hand pressed into what was unmistakably someone’s chest.

She turned around, intending to either apologize or grumble, depending on said person’s gender, only for her breath to catch in her throat. The person was slumped over in a pile, his head covered in blood that had also stained the metal side of the car. She tried to step backwards, but the angle of the floor made it nearly impossible. She wanted to scream, she felt like she had to scream, but her body refused, instead just letting her mouth hang open in shock.

Behind her, she could hear a child crying and the sound of someone gasping in pain. She kept her attention focused on the man in front of her, that was the only thing she could focus on right now, the only thing that mattered. She reached out with a shaky arm to check his pulse, though she wasn’t sure how to do so. She pressed against his neck and felt nothing, even as she moved her hand around. The man’s chest didn’t rise and fall and she felt as though she’d been doused in cold water. He was dead.

She had never seen a dead body before, and even if he was a male, it was a terrible thing. She shivered, and as her body grew colder, she felt a mysterious warmth across her left side. She looked down at herself and immediately wished she hadn’t.

The left side of her body was dripping with blood and she quickly realized that it was her one blood, seeping out from around the shard of what must had been metal imbedded in her shoulder. It didn’t hurt, and she suspected she was running on adrenaline more than anything, but the sight sent a jolt down her body. She fought to control her breathing, still choking as the thickness of the smoke began to increase along with the overpowering smell of burning rubber and copper.

She felt someone tap her on the shoulder and she wheeled around, falling over herself in the process. Behind her was a woman carrying a small child, who seemed unhurt but was wailing and coughing. The woman had a hand over her mouth and she was standing entirely on one leg, the other streaked with blood and twisted at an odd angle.

The woman pointed upwards and Tenko looked up to see a figure standing above what must have been the still-open train doors. Through their firefighting helmet they gave orders that Tenko barely heard, and those who could move on their own reached upwards to be lifted out, using the seats of the car as leverage. Tenko stayed behind next to the woman, doubting that she would be able to grab with her arm, which had begun to throb with pain, though not as much as she felt it should. The smoke had started to clear just a bit, and she could hear sounds from outside, muffled orders and a spraying sound. Crackling flames and wheels on uneven concrete.

With the uninjured removed from the car, she watched as other people in white coats and masks arrived, some descending into the car to help. She was placed on a stretched and carried upwards, out of the car and into the station.

The world was a blur and Tenko let her head fall to the side, looking at the scene around her as the paramedics carried her past the safety gates and into the station proper. She could barely see the car in front of her own as it was so immersed in smoke and just looking in that direction burned her eyes. The concrete platform was torn up and immediately, Tenko’s mind jumped to Himiko and Angie. Had they made it out safely?

The burning pain in her shoulder grew and she clenched her teeth and forgot the rest of the world as she was pulled out into the sunlight.

 

Tenko shook her head slightly. No point in dwelling on such things, not now. It would be better to just forget it.

So she continued to clutch Himiko’s small hand until it was over.

 

The roads back to Hope’s Peak were still completely jammed which meant a great deal of frustration from Kaito, who repeatedly signed and groaned over the still cars in front of him, which was pretty typical for a degenerate male. Angie sat backwards in the passenger seat in order to talk to the two girls, which couldn’t possibly be safe but she didn’t seem to care.

“Come on, come on! Let’s say a prayer to Atua for keeping Tenko safe!”

Angie was cheerful as ever and it was kind of creepy, Tenko thought, but Himiko didn’t seem to mind as she bowed her head and pressed her hands together.

Really? The two of them had been alone for less than a half hour and Angie had already converted her friend to her religion. She shook Himiko’s shoulder and the smaller girl rocked back and forth with the motion.

“What’re you doing?”

“Don’t let yourself be brainwashed, Himiko!”

“Nyeh?” Himiko’s response was lazy and she looked tired, so Tenko didn’t press the issue.

Finally, Kaito managed to maneuver the car through the gates of Hope’s Peak. There were more guards than usual surrounding the campus, which was probably to be expected, given the circumstances, and all of them had to show their Hope’s Peak IDs and have the car searched.

Once they were deemed clear, Kaito pulled into the campus and immediately they were greeted by a swarm of students, their classmates.

Everyone from the class had apparently come to greet them, and Kaede headed the pack, cards and flowers overflowing from her arms as she smiled at them. Tenko stepped out and almost had to neo-aikido Rantaro and Shuichi, who ended up uncomfortably close to each other due to the pushing of the crowd.

Kaede immediately shoved the gifts into Tenko’s hands and wrapped her arms around Tenko in a tight hug. “I’m so glad you’re okay!”

Tenko squeaked in surprise and scrambled to hold onto the gifts, but when she felt Kaede’s wet cheeks pressed against her shirt, she gave up and wrapped her arms around the other girl in response.

 

Kaede found it hard to sleep as she lay in her dorm bed. The clock on her phone said it was past midnight, yet she continued scrolling through the news articles. The death toll updated from 96 to 97 people, which was just a number until her mind printed Tenko’s and Angie’s and Himiko’s faces over them. Her mind swirled. The suspects involved were presumed dead, the police searching for any collaborators and encouraging caution. It didn’t feel real.

97 dead, more than 300 injured. She wrapped her arms around herself and rolled over, the light from her phone casting shadows onto the ceiling above.

 

May 4th was still a holiday, but Kaede didn’t have anything planned for it. Well, not for anyone else.

She paced back and forth in front of Hamamoto’s office for a couple of seconds, before she knocked on the door.

“Come in!” Her teacher immediately called from within.

Kaede opened the door and stepped inside. The office was just as eccentric as Hamamoto was, with a vast assortment of folders and office supplies scattered about in bright neon colors. Hamamoto apparently hadn’t taken the day off as she was still at her desk, typing away on a computer.

It was a spacious room and Kaede suspected that the low number of teachers was what allowed Hope’s Peak to give each one an individual office instead of a teacher’s lounge.

“Hamamoto-sensei?”

“Yes, Akamatsu-san?” Her teacher looked up quizzically.

Kaede took a deep breath to make sure she wouldn’t lose her nerve. “I don’t think I’m fit to be class rep!” she said as quickly as possible.

“And may I ask why that is?” Hamamoto’s voice was calm and even and it was enough to ease Kaede’s nerves.

“I just feel like I’m not suited for it. I haven’t been able to do anything for anyone.” She looked down at her shoes in shame. “I couldn’t help Tojo-san or Hoshi-kun and because of me, Ouma-kun and Chabashira-san got hurt. They could’ve both died and I couldn’t do anything to help them.”

She felt her lower lip quiver and she squished her lips together to hide it.

“I think.” Hamamoto adjusted her glasses. “That you’re expectations of yourself are too high. There’s only so much a student can do, you know?”

For some reason, Kaede felt a sudden burst of anger in her chest. What a _student_ could do? How could she say that when…

“You’re our teacher! Why haven’t you done anything to help?” She clenched her fists at her side, well aware that she shouldn’t be yelling at her elder but the stress built up inside of her overflowed of its own accord. “You did help Ouma-kun when Harukawa-san attacked him! You didn’t do anything! And you didn’t check to see if everyone was alright, after the attack! So how can you…” She choked back the tears that threatened to seep out as her anger began to subside, replaced with regret and sadness. What was wrong with her? She didn’t know.

Hamamoto remained perfectly calm, and she seemed unfazed by Kaede’s yelling.

“I understand why you’d be upset with me, Akamatsu-san. But there are some things you need to understand.

“You might think Hope’s Peak is some sort of safe haven for you to grow up sheltered away from the world. And I’m sure that world feels normal to you, it’s the only world you’ve ever known. But we adults see just how dangerous this world is compared to the one of our youth, and that’s why I can’t handle all your problems for you.

“You’re going out into a dangerous world, and I won’t be there to protect you by the time you graduate. I may not even be able to protect you tomorrow. So you need to learn how to protect yourselves and how to work together, because that’s far better than being thrown out into the world with no idea of how to survive.

“So I have to trust you kids to look after each other. Because that’s the best way to ensure your futures.”

Kaede nodded along, reeling from the speech she’d heard, and she left the office with a weight pressing on her chest.

 

Once on the far side of Hope’s Peaks grounds had been a statue of the founder. Kaede knew this because she’d seen it in textbooks time and time again, first as an easy to digest drawing to teach Elementary schoolers about a terrible tragedy minus the graphic details and then as photographs of the before and after, when it had been left as little more than a pile of rubble.

Now, there was no statue, only a black marble cube, a little more than a meter on each side. Engraved and outlined in gold were hundreds of names, most of whom Kaede had never heard. The names of all the students and staff who had lost their lives in the tragedy.

Kaede sat on a bench facing away from the memorial, humming a tune to calm herself down. She was so distracted by her own thoughts that she failed to hear the sound of footsteps behinds her.

“Hello there.”

Kaede jumped in surprise and spun around. “Oh, Amami-kun. Hi.”

Her voice didn’t hold her usual spunk and Rantaro seemed to sense that. “May I sit next to you?”

Kaede shifted over in response.

For a moment, the two of them sat side by side before Rantaro spoke. “Is there something bothering you?”

Kaede sighed. “Yeah, I guess so.” She was on a trend of opening up lately so she might as well continue it. “I just feel like I’ve been making everything worse, you know? I tried to help out Harukawa-san and Ouma-kun and that went wrong, and now with what happened to Chabashira-san…”

Rantaro turned to look at her. “Well, I think it’s hardly fair to blame yourself for what happened yesterday. There’s no way you could’ve know such a thing would happen.”

“I know.” Kaede rested her chin in her hands. “But I can’t help but think that maybe it is my fault. Maybe I’m bad luck or something.”

It was a bit superstitious, but a part of Kaede had begun to believe it. If there could be people who were lucky then surely there must be people who were unlucky as well.

Rantaro was calm as ever and he seemed to be able to sense what she was thinking. “Well, I think you’re being too hard on yourself. You remind me a bit of my sister Yukiko you know? She’s always doubting whether she’s good enough. But she’s such as smart and talented girl, she just can’t see it.” He smiled, but the expression on his face was wistful.

“I’m not a very good big brother, but I think you’re a good big sister, at least for the students here.”

She was sure he meant it in a nice way, but in spite of herself, Kaede stiffened. A good big sister, huh?

Well, maybe she could be a big sister, for the students here, even if she could never be one at home.

“Thanks, Amami-kun.” She smiled softly at him, and when she looked up to meet his eyes, they were filled with understanding.

It wasn’t too unexpected. She was sure that she was far from the only person who had lost a sibling.

The image of a face so similar to her own appeared in her memory, for just a second, before it was gone. But she had been so young, and her parents were the only ones who still cried, sometimes.

 

In the afternoon, the headmaster called an optional assembly for the students still shaking from the attack. The station was only five minutes away from Hope’s Peak and so the whole thing was jarring. Kaede sat next to Shuichi in one of the foldout chairs in the gymnasium, listening to the sound of Headmaster Naegi speaking. His voice was awfully calm, but there was one part of his speech that stuck out to her the most, the part about going on with their daily lives while still practicing caution.

After the end of the assembly, the headmaster descended from the stage to answer questions from some still worried students and Kaede elbowed Shuichi lightly in the side.

“Saihara-kun?”

“Hm?” Shuichi looked a bit surprised. “What is it?”

“Before golden week ends, there’s one last thing I’d like to do.”

 

 


	12. One More Event

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm back!
> 
> This chapter is rated M for Miu

The campus remained quiet the next day as well, the students still reeling from Monday’s events. And without any classes, the school building itself was even quieter, occupied only by the few students who were passionate enough about their ultimate talents to spend their time in their labs even through the holidays.

The science and tech area was on the second floor, and Kaede found Mu’s lab in between Gonta’s and an ultimate Technician from another class. She knocked on the door.

There was no answer, so she knocked again. From inside, she heard the sound of something falling over and Miu cussing loudly. Then the door flew open.

“What’da you want, titless?”

And already, things were going great.

Kaede didn’t really want to retaliate, as she wasn’t interested in dealing with a cowering, whimpering Miu at the moment. “Hi Iruma-san…how are you.”

“I’m super busy working on my brilliant inventions!” Miu huffed, jabbing her thumb into her chest. “Every second I spend talking to you is a waste of my priceless brain cells, you know!”

Maybe this had been a mistake. Kaede pressed on anyway. What was something that would be good to do with Miu?

She didn’t have to think long as the other girl answered the question for her. “Unless you wanna see all of my masterful creations. I know, I know, I would be envious too if I were you, and not just because of these gorgeous melons—“

“Okay, okay.” Anything to turn the conversation away from breasts. Plus, sharing their talents could be interesting. “Sure, I’ll look at your inventions.”

Miu’s face lit up at that, and Kaede felt as though she had begun to make some progress.

 

If Kaede could go back in time, so would have scolded her past self for being so naïve.

“Eeyaaah!” She yanked the glasses off of her head and nearly chucked them across the room.

“Hey, be careful with that, do you wanna set technology back 20 years?”

If this was the epitome of modern technology, Kaede wasn’t sure if she wanted to see it. “Jeez, I don’t want to watch your porn, you know! Can’t you make something normal for once!”

Miu wilted. “B-but this is normal…don’t get mad…I-I didn’t know you’re playing for the other team.”

“…what?”

“You wanna watch some scissoring instead? I’m not gonna judge what gets you wet.”

“Will you stop that!” Kaede was pretty sure her face was bright red. “Seriously! Do you have any inventions that aren’t…sexual.”

Miu assumed a timid pose once again. “s-sorry!”

“It’s fine.” Kaede rubbed her head in frustration. She had hoped that they would find something they had in common so they could at least get a little closer. But so far, everything had gone…well, she couldn’t really say she hadn’t expected this.

Miu yanked some sort of headset off one of her many cluttered work tables. How had she managed to do this to her lab in a single month? She was dedicated to her work, that was certain.

“This is my hold-phone-conversations-while-you-sleep v.2.01.! A super invention that will change the way we communicate!” Miu swung the contraption around with pride. “If you wanna grovel at my feet, maybe I’ll let you try it out, bwahahaha!”

Inventions for sleep. It was…a weird concept. But also kind of an interesting one. “Does it…work?”

“Who the hell do you think you’re talking to? My genius brain has never produced a faulty invention ever! It can read your brain waves and perfectly replicate your thoughts while feeding the other person’s voice into your brain as well! So of course it fucking works!”

“Oh!” it did seem like a neat idea, but Miu’s explanation didn’t make much sense. How could you control your responses while you were asleep? “Can I see how it works?”

Miu hissed in response. “Hell no! I’m the only one allowed to use it. And I bet you want me to fall asleep just so you can fondle my boobs or something, you fucking pervert!”

“I-I wouldn’t do that!”

“So you don’t fuck girls? Really? But even straight girls should be jealous of these bazongas!” She jiggled her breasts for emphasis and Kaede looked away in embarrassment.

‘Jeez!” She puffed out her cheeks. “Can’t you have a single conversation where you act appropriately? Can’t you go five minutes without saying something sexual?”

She heard Miu sniff sadly. “I-I just—I’m just trying to be funny—don’t get mad…”

Kaede sighed softly, turning her eyes back to Miu’s downtrodden form. Did she really think acting like that was the best way to get along with people?

Perhaps, if she could show Miu she didn’t always have to act in such a way…

Kaede reached out and took Miu’s hand in hers. The other girl yelped in surprise, face growing red and flustered.

“S-so you really are making moves on me h—“

Don’t get riled up… “That’s not it! You know you don’t need to always be like that, right? Trying to be funny? You can talk normally to me too, you know!”

Miu babbled incoherently for a couple of seconds, but her hand didn’t leave Kaede’s. ‘Wha-what are you?? I am talking normally…”

Oh, well maybe that was normal for Miu. She wouldn’t be surprised.

“But you don’t need to try so hard!” she shook Miu’s hand up and down a couple times and the other girl squeaked a bit.

What was something they could do together Kaede glanced around Miu’s talent lab. From the piles upon piles of inventions Kaede couldn’t quite comprehend, it was clear that Miu was incredibly passionate about her talent. Kaede could relate. Playing the piano, letting her fingers flow over the keys, seeing the happy smiles on the faces of the crowd…

She wondered if Miu liked to see those smiles too, on the faces of those who used her inventions.

“Hey, Iruma-san?”

“H-huh?”

“Do you wanna share our talents with each other?”

Miu didn’t respond right away, blinking in surprise, so Kaede continued. “Like, maybe you could teach me how to make an invention, and I’ll teach you how to play the piano!”

The other girl stared at her for a second before breaking into a hearty grin. “Fuck yeah, let’s do it!”

 

Miu refused to give Kaede a specific invention to build. “You gotta come up with it yourself or it’s not a real invention”, she’d said, and Kaede could understand that mentality. But looking at the piles of stuff Miu had set up for her, she wasn’t quite sure where to begin.

She glanced over at Miu, who was fiddling with one of her own inventions, the pornographic sunglasses that Miu had tricked her into wearing earlier. Kaede couldn’t make heads or tails of what she was doing, and sighed. How was she supposed to do this? She had at least hoped that Miu would give some directions.

It was then that her eyes caught on Miu’s overflowing trashcan, full of empty soda bottles and other junk. “what’s all this?”

“Huh?” Miu looked up at her, then at the trash can. “It’s just garbage ‘n shit. If you wanna use it, you can.”

As much as Kaede disliked the idea of rummaging through Miu’s trash, she could feel an idea appearing at the back of her mind.

It took quite a bit of time to set up and even more time to get right, but when she was finished, she couldn’t help but feel a little proud of her work.

“Hey, Iruma-san! Do you want to see?”

Even though Miu had pretty much ignored her completely before, now the other girl shot out of her seat and over to Kaede. “What’d you make, Kaediot?”

Deciding to ignore the nickname, Kaede took the glass marble in her hand and placed it at the top of her invention.

The marble slide down the wooden ramp, bounced off a plastic spoon, and then ricocheted into a half filled glass bottle. Then into another one. And another.  That had been the hardest part, getting all the bottles lined up perfectly, but in the end, it worked wonders as the single piano chord echoed around the lab.

Miu blinked once, then again. “What the hell? This isn’t an invention, it’s a…a Rude Goardbrick thingamajig!”

“It’s Rube Goldberg! And it is an invention.” She rolled the marble again. “Listen. C E G!”

“I-I don’t know what that is.”

Kaede beamed. “Then I’m gonna show you!”

 

“Hell yeah, I’m gonna pound these keys, baby! These fingers have had a lot of experience!”

“…okay.”

“ I mean, I’m really good with my fingers! If you’d watched all the footage in my Projection Sunglasses, you would’ve seen that!”

“Not right now, Iruma-san.” She tried not to raise her voice, not really interested in turning Miu into a whimpering mess again. “Now, place your hand here, like this.” She took Miu’s right hand in her own, the other girl squeaking again, and placed it over the piano keys. “So right now, your thumb’s on middle C, okay.”

Miu nodded silently.

“And here are D, E, F, and G for your other fingers. So if you go like this” she pressed Miu’s fingers down in turn. “That’s a c chord. C, E, G! You try.”

“I know that!” Miu insisted, but she played the chord for herself anyway. Kaede explained the A and B keys to her as well and pointed each of them out on the piece of sheet music she’d placed on the piano stand.

“This is Mozart’s ‘Ode to Joy’, it’s a—“

“I’m a gorgeous girl genius! I totally know what ‘Ode to Joy’ is!” Miu hit the keys in her enthusiasm and Kaede winced.

“So let’s just do the right hand for now, okay? E E F G G…”

Miu followed her lead and played through the simple piece, face twisted in determination. It was clear she didn’t want to mess up. She did do a good job of remembering the keys, even if her timing was a bit off, and when she finished, she stood up from her seat, raising her hands in triumph!

“Bwaha! I did it! I can play the piano! Hell yeah, look at me, Kaediot!”

Kaede felt a smile begin to appear on her face. Miu’s enthusiasm and excitement was contagious, and she had been worried that Miu would find the piano boring.

“Now, gimme a more complicated piece! This is children’s crap!”

Well, that wasn’t unexpected.

Miu had already begun rummaging around in her Mozart folder. She yanked out another piece, and Kaede giggled to herself as “Three Waltzes no. 2” dangled from her hand. Miu took one look at what must have looked to her like a mess of notes and lines and shrieked.

 

“Hey Kaediot!” Miu shouted at her as Kaede packed up her things and prepared to leave. The sun was setting and the golden yellow light streaming from the window reminded her stomach that it was dinner time.

“Yeah?” Kaede turned to look at her.

For some reason, Miu was trembling slightly, looking embarrassed as she twirled her long hair with her finger. She mumbled something under her breath.

“Sorry, what was that?”

“D-don’t make me say it again!” Miu said quickly, before looking down at her feet. “I said, thanks, alright. For spending time with me…”

Kaede blinked for a moment before she offered the other girl a smile. “I’m glad I got to spend time with you too, Iruma-san!”

“…are you hitting on me?”

“No! Why would you think—you know what, never mind…” Her smiled was tired, but it still remained. “Do you want to head to the dining hall? I’m hungry!”

“Are you hungry for dick or pus—“

“IRUMA-SAN!”

Kaede sighed.

“Come on, let’s just go.”


	13. Cleaning Duty

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey, I legitimately forgot this fic existed so that's why I didn't update until now. Well, that and I've been feeling a bit discouraged. I wonder if the quality of my writing has dropped off or it was never that good to begin with. I don't know.  
> Okay I'll stop complaining.
> 
> Warnings for: Depression, suicidal thoughts

If Ryoma had been born 20 years earlier, his life probably would have been a lot different.

He had plenty of time to dwell on such things, in the late hours of the night as he lay on the thin prison futon and stared up at the ceiling or while he worked mindlessly on an assembly line.

Perhaps, if there were more kids his age, he wouldn’t have been considered a star tennis pro at all. He didn’t exactly have the build for it to begin with. And maybe the mafia wouldn’t have evaded police intervention for so long by virtue of not being as bad as the remnants. And at 16, he definitely wouldn’t have been waiting on another appeal by to determine whether he was to die or not.

“It’s a law to target the remnants, you know,” his lawyer had told him. “Since most of them committed their crimes when they were so young, the Future Foundation needed a legal precedent to execute them. But you’re not a remnant, so there’s no reason for them to sentence you to death.”

Ryoma listened as his lawyer continued with his spiel on how to save his life, but he couldn’t bring himself to care. He hadn’t planned on surviving this long anyway, he’d assumed he was dead the minute he stepped into the mafia headquarters and kept assuming he would end up with a bullet between his eyes up until he was the only one left standing in the flashing blue and red police headlights, splattered in blood.

Yet here he was, still alive, if only for a short while.

He wasn’t quite sure why he accepted the offer to begin with. Maybe it was the shock of seeing the Makoto Naegi himself beyond the reinforced glass waiting to speak to him. Or maybe there was some part of him, deep down, that wanted a second chance.

He had nothing to bring with him as he stepped back into the outside world. Hope’s Peak Academy had too much power, he thought.

And so Ryoma Hoshi became a free man, if only for three short years.

 

The first day back in class, Kaede took a proud look around the classroom at her successful work, however marred by challenges. Kokichi was sitting on Kaito’s desk, which the other boy didn’t seem too pleased by, and he wasn’t receiving a death glare from Maki. Himiko was turned around in her chair, listening to Tenko’s excited chattering. Kaede shot a glance at Miu, and waved, ignoring her stammering in response.

Well, it was certainly progress. Kaede smiled to herself as she took a seat. She had finally managed to do something as class rep.

The feeling lasted for all of three seconds until she opened her desk and triggered the smoke bomb within. Over the sound of shouting and coughs she could hear Kokichi hollering about how he was getting revenge.

 

Kirumi was the one left to clean up the dust scattered on the floor at the end of class, and Kaede gave her one last hesitant look as she walked towards the exit.

“Tojo-san, are you sure you don’t need any help?”

Kirumi’s smile was soft but professional. “Thank you Akamatsu-san, but I assure you that I don’t mind. This is my duty, after all.”

“…ok.” But Kaede lingered by the exit for a moment longer. There was something not quite right about leaving one girl to clean an entire classroom by herself, every day, talent or not.

She frowned. She could really use some piano music right now.

The arts wing was on the third floor, and Kaede had to pass by the gym to reach the stairway. Ryoma was loitering by the door again, his expression still impossible to read.

Well, she knew not to suggest a game of tennis now, but maybe…

“Hoshi-kun?”

Ryoma turned to look at her. “Yes?”

Kaede took a deep breath. As class rep, now was the time to be assertive.

“Hoshi-kun, I assign you the duty of helping Tojo-san clean the classroom!”

If Ryoma was surprised by this, he didn’t show it. Instead, he removed his chocolate cigarette and closed his eyes.

“I suppose it’s only fair to help her.” He gave her a brief nod and walked off down the hall casually. Kaede watched his retreating back, hoping she’d manage to get him involved in something, at least.

She turned her attention back to the staircase. Now, it was time for the piano.

 

Kirumi was already more than halfway done with her cleaning by the time Ryoma arrived. That was probably to be expected, she was the ultimate maid after all and she hadn’t abandoned her talent the way he had. She looked up as he entered, though she didn’t pause from her task of sweeping up dirt into a dustpan.

“Hoshi-kun, how may I help you?”

“Akamatsu-san requested that I help you clean.” Ryoma didn’t bother to beat around the bush.

Kirumi paused for a second, cupping her chin in her hand. “I see. Well, if it’s a request, then I will abide by it. Though I do hope that Akamatsu-san hasn’t gotten the wrong idea about my work.”

Ryoma thought on her words for a moment as he picked up a rag and bottle of cleaner fluid. Kaede had asked him to help, both to get him more involved with the class, he could only assume, and to make Kirumi’s job a little easier.

But…

“You enjoy your talent, don’t you Tojo?”

“Yes, I do.”

Ryoma set about wiping down one of the desks in stiff circular motions, standing on his tiptoes to reach the other side. “I see.”

What else could he say? It didn’t matter if he enjoyed his own talent or not. He had thrown it away, it was over and done with and he didn’t even want to think about picking up a tennis racket again.

If Kirumi judged him for that, then so be it. He didn’t care much about what the others thought of him to begin with.

But Kirumi, perhaps sensing his mood, said nothing as they worked in silence.

The work got done quicker with two people, and not long after Ryoma started the walk back to his dorm room.

Kaede sure was persistent, he thought to himself. Though he supposed it wasn’t a bad thing, to do a little bit of work like this from time to time. It was certainly better than haunting the halls of the school after hours, watching the gym door and feeling nothing.

His chocolate cigarette had mostly melted away, so he fished another out of the pack in his pocket. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw movement.


	14. New Friend

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> asdfadsgf college exams took up a lot of time and I also got pretty sick, so that's why I haven't updated in a while.
> 
> Also I got distracted by other projects, but I won't forget about this fic, don't worry!

Kirumi took her jobs very seriously. As a maid, it was her duty to protect and serve the people who she worked for. And at that time, those people were he classmates. As such, Kaede’s request could not go unanswered.

She strolled down the hallway of the boy’s dormitory, stopping once she reached her destination. She rang Ryoma’s bell.

Inside the room, she could hear the faint sound of shuffling, before Ryoma opened the door a crack and peered out at her.

“Do you need something, Tojo?” His voice was calm and stoic, as always, but Kirumi was skilled at reading people, and Ryoma’s body language said that he wanted her to leave.

A bit of dilemma. Kaede wanted her to interact with Ryoma, but Ryoma wanted no such thing. Though perhaps there was some room for compromise.

“Hello, Hoshi-kun. Akamatsu-san requested that I bring you a meal. I hope it is to your liking.” She held out the bento box. Three layers, all carefully prepared. She’d done her best to gauge his taste in food from what he ate at each of their meals.

Ryoma opened the door a little more, just wide enough to accept it. He studied the box. “Hmm, it’s a bit much for me.”

“My apologies. I’ll see to it that I don’t go overboard in the future.”

Ryoma pulled at his hat. “Nah, it’s not a problem. Don’t worry about—“ Ryoma cut himself off and stumbled forward a bit. Kirumi looked down to see the tiny orange head pushing itself against Ryoma’s legs.

“I see, a cat.” She had packed some beef in the bento box, so perhaps the cat smelled it.

Ryoma seemed a bit sheepish as he set the bento on a self and gently nudged the animal back into the room. “She’s not mine. She was wandering around the campus, and since she’s so skinny and she doesn’t have a collar, she’s probably a stray.” He looked down. “I’m just looking after her until I get a chance to bring her to a vet.”

He looked up at Kirumi. “May I make a request?”

“Certainly.”

“Do you think you could take her to the vet for me? I’m not sure how to get her there myself.”

Kirumi nodded thoughtfully. Her talent allowed her to obtain a driver’s license early, but the same was probably not true for Ryoma. Even with a license, he might not be able to drive. And taking a cat on the crowded trains could cause problems of its own.

“In that case, I will take her. Would you like to come along?”

She hadn’t meant for her question to be difficult, but Ryoma looked thoughtful for a moment, before he shrugged. “You can take her. I’ve got an old cat carrier you can use.”

Kirumi looked at him, reading his body language again. He seemed a bit disappointed at the thought of relinquishing the cat to her. While it was her job to abide by the requests of her classmates, it was also her job to make the right decisions as a maid.

“If you want to come along, then that would be fine with me.”

A pause, then Ryoma responded. “I suppose there’s no harm in it.”

 

“It’s too bad there’s no Ultimate Veterinarian, huh?” Ryoma balanced the cat carrier on his lap in the passenger seat as Kirumi drove.

“That’s true. I suppose only so many ultimates can be admitted.”

Ryoma nodded, keeping a tight hold on the carrier as Kirumi drove over a bump in the road. “She’s very calm though. My cat always hated riding in a car. “

Kirumi watched him out of her peripheral vision. His face had softened somewhat, as if he were remembering something nice. His cat must have meant a lot to him.

Their drive was mostly silent, however, and after maneuvering their way through traffic, still disrupted thanks to the incident, they reached an animal clinic.

The cat stayed calm all throughout its examination, only becoming agitated over getting a shot.

“She’s in pretty good health, though underfed.” The doctor told the two of them. “No diseases or anything. I can offer you some recommendations for food and care.”

“Oh.” Ryoma pulled at his hat. “I wasn’t planning on…keeping her.”        

The doctor nodded in understanding, but Kirumi noticed the resigned look on Ryoma’s face.

“Hoshi-kun, would you like to keep the cat?”

Ryoma looked up at her. “It doesn’t matter what I want. I doubt it would be allowed.”

Kirumi shook her head. “Not necessarily. There’s no formal rules about keeping pets in the dorms.”

“But still, I don’t know if she would be happy, cooped up in such a small place. But I supposed I’d be able to take her outside.” Ryoma looked thoughtful. “It’s probably better than a shelter.”

 

Despite Ryoma’s reluctance, when they left the clinic with a new collar, several cans of cat food, toys, a bed, and a litterbox, most of which were carried by Kirumi, the contented look on his face was clear.

“Have you thought of a name for her?”

Ryoma let the cat sniff his finger through the carrier gate. “Not yet. I’ll think about it.”

“If you would like, I could look for suggestions.”

Ryoma shook his head. “No, that’s alright. I’ll think of a name for myself.”

The ride home was still quiet, but the calmness of it was noticeable.


End file.
